RNC Night Two: Paul Ryan takes the stage

Thursday, 30 August 2012

Tonight delegates from across the country gathered in the Tampa Bay Times Forum for the second night of speeches at the Republican National Convention. The headliner was Rep. Paul Ryan, who was officially nominated to become the Vice Presidential nominee. Ryan excited the crowd and got people talking on Twitter… In fact, Tweets about the #GOP2012 convention topped two million as Ryan took the stage—six times the Tweets sent about the 2008 conventions combined.

The Republican VP nominee also drove the top three peaks tonight in Tweets-per-minute, the highest coming at the conclusion of his speech: 6,669. A big part of that conversation was people tweeting Ryan’s most quotable moments:

Ryan: “College graduates shouldn’t have to live out their 20s in their childhood bedrooms staring up at fading Obama posters…”

— S.E. Cupp (@secupp) August 30, 2012

Ryan: “I said, I hope it’s not a deal-breaker Mitt, but my playlist starts with AC/DC, and ends with Zeppelin.”

— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) August 30, 2012

Rousing end: “Let’s give this effort everything we have.Let’ssee this through all the way.Let’s get this done.” #GOP2012

— Jonathan D. Salant (@JDSalant) August 30, 2012

And his “faded Obama posters” line has already inspired a Twitter parody account: @FadedObama.

Among the other speakers, the night’s biggest star was former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Her speech peaked at 3,961 Tweets per minute, higher than any speaker outside of Ryan. Much of the Twitter conversation was about the style of her speech:

Best part of listening to Condi is you can hear the nervous tremor in her voice and yet she is completely fluent at the same time.

— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) August 30, 2012

Rice’s cadence and sentence structure are decidedly from the ’50s-’70s era of speechwriting, and thus stand out in this bumper sticker room.

— James Ledbetter (@ledbetreuters) August 30, 2012

And noting that she delivered the speech without a teleprompter…

One of Condi Rice’s teleprompters. Note: it ain’t on. #gop2012 twitter.com/Phil_Mattingly…

— Phil Mattingly (@Phil_Mattingly) August 30, 2012

Stay tuned to @gov for more updates tomorrow from the big finale of the Republican National Convention!

Posted by Adam Sharp (@AdamS)
Head of Government, News and Social Innovation