“It was an old man’s delivery, but overstatedly so for effect. It was a cutting delivery and for that reason delivered in low key. But for all of Clint Eastwood’s rhetorical cleverness at the Republican Convention, the speech derived its effectiveness precisely because it wasn’t one of those ‘I take this platform tonight with pen in hand, bearing in mind the immortal words of Clancy M. Duckworth’ type orations.

“It wasn’t the speech of someone who was running for office. There was no malice in it. Just a tone of regret.”

— Richard Fernandez, PJMedia.com

“Yeah, I loved Eastwood. I even thought that was bold and good. Eastwood succeeded in getting under Obama’s skin. At 12:30 last night, somebody on behalf of Obama (and for all I know it was Obama himself) tweeted a picture of Obama in an official presidential chair. Looks like it’s in the Cabinet Room. It might be in the Oval, but, regardless, it’s the official presidential chair, and it’s got a little miniature plaque on the back of the chair that says, “President US 2009.” And the tweet is, “This seat is taken.” Now, we’ve talked about this. So here they needle Obama. He’s so transparent!”

— Rush Limbaugh

“I made my share of Clint Eastwood jokes last night. But I also watched his performance a second time, which is kind of amazing: How many convention speeches are worth watching twice?

“Eastwood’s criticisms of Barack Obama were the average American’s criticisms of Barack Obama. If you want to hammer the president in a way that appeals to undecideds, you couldn’t do much better than to complain about high unemployment and an endless war.

“Above all, those 12 minutes were interesting to watch. They were a great break from the heavily scripted, relentlessly on-message, and utterly boring infomercial that was the bulk of the convention. He was human, eccentric, funny, weird, relatable. I say the speech helps Romney.”

— Jesse Walker, Reason.com