Collegiate Times

She took the stage and promised to speak from the heart, which would have been more sincere had she not fumbled through words on the teleprompter, hardly a showing of conviction.

Her appeal to women was straight out of a Miss America pageant, speaking elegantly of the value of a strong-willed mother and a generous grandmother, things that most, if not all, mothers and grandmothers hold true to their hearts regardless of the political implications.

And Mrs. Romney's attempt to identify with working women fell short, when she told women, "You know what it's like to work a little harder during the day to earn the respect you deserve at work" while the Republican ticket, as it stands today, is decidedly against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

Perhaps the timing of the convention could be to blame, because it couldn't have been worse. With Hurricane Isaac surging towards the Gulf Coast, attention shifted from the highly anticipated gathering of the nation's foremost conservative politicians to the dark history of Hurricane Katrina and what kind of damage the newest hurricane might do the region. News networks pulled some of their most respected anchors from Tampa and sent them to New Orleans, and hurricane stories lead every news block over the few short days Republicans had to make their play.

And the constant attacks against the president shored up by Mrs. Romney's fellow speakers did nothing but shift attention away from the intended message — that Mitt Romney's was a campaign that could rely on more than negative ads, that Mitt Romney qualified in many ways as an average American, and that Romney's policies were the best option to put the nation back on track.

Conservatives must now refocus, and uniting behind Romney as a single unit is the first step. This is not to say that, with still more than two months left of campaigning to do before election night, the Ann Romney speech was the last card conservatives had up their sleeve. Attempts to present Mitt Romney as a gentleman Americans can relate to have not ceased with the RNC; and, the electorate will be urged time and time again to consider how Romney really has their best interests at heart.

But when facing the facts, Republicans can't shy away from the fact their latest attempt just didn't work.

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A version of this article appeared in the Aug 31 issue of the Collegiate Times.