Photograph by Charles Dharapak/AP Photo
Actor Jon Voight arrives on the floor of the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., on Aug. 28, 2012.
Radio Row is a regular at political conventions.
And Jon Voight is a regular spokesman for the right wing of his party.
The actor sat with the The United West on Radio Row in the Tampa Convention Center at the Republican National Convention for an interview. The United West states its aims as “defending and advancing Western Civilization against the kinetic and cultural onslaught of Shariah.” The host of this interview spoke of Obama’s “Marxist views.”
“The president is of the Marxist, socialist root,” said Voight, also suggesting that listeners see the movie, “2016.: Obama’s America,” a documentary from Dinesh D’Souza, conservative author of the New York Times Bestseller “The Roots of Obama’s Rage.” That big-screen screed about President Barack Obama opened in Tampa over the weekend to exactly one viewer — our reporter.
“I’m 73 years old, and I won’t be at peace unless I see my country in order, you know,” Voight said in his Radio Row interview. “I want to do everything I can to restore hope and a future for the American way of life.”
“I’m here because I want to help in every way get this man, these men, into office,” he said of the Republican Party’s ticket, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. “It’s not a secret — we need to fix — something’s broken here.”
Voight’s screen characters have run a wide spectrum, going back to Midnight Cowboy, 1969, Catch-22, 1970, and Deliverance, 1972, and as recently as the remake of the Manchurain Candidate in 2004 and his role as Jack Bauer’s hawkish foil on “24” – a role that most closely matched his own politics. He’s playing his politics in real time.
The actor shared a story that the candidate’s wife, Ann Romney, told him:
“When they dropped out of the nominating field last time, they went home, and somebody had a recorder. Ann Romney said, `We will never do this again.”’
Ann Romney, who will address the party’s convention tonight, also has shared this story with a broader audience in a television news interview.
Her husband asked a couple years later if he should run again.
“She said, `Is there any chance for this country?”’
“Mitt said to her, `There’s not much time. There’s a short window. But there’s a chance.”’
That’s when Romney knew, he said, that it was time to “right the ship.”
The actor also held forth at a Romney fundraiser at The Beverly Hills hotel earlier this year.
“There’s a big difference between these two candidates, obviously,” Voight told reporters then asking about the race between Romney and Obama. “The present president would like to have everybody dependent on the government and Governor Romney wants to restore individual freedoms so people can pursue their dreams to success. We are losing the American dream, really, because of the attack on the American dream. There’s quite a lot at stake here.”
