From this Saturday's Up With Chris Hayes, Chris takes a look at the message we saw coming out of this year's Republican National Convention and as he concluded "It's an ugly message, but in a time of anxiety and diminished expectations, not a stupid one." It may not be stupid but it's extremely cynical.

The RNC’s backward-looking tour of nostalgia:

This week the Republican party gathered in Tampa to tell a terrible and tragic tale of American decline. They couldn't quite say that, explicitly, of course. This is the party of Reagan and sunny optimism, or so they'd like to present themselves, but you couldn't help notice that the three days of speeches on the convention floor were an orgy of imagined persecution, grievance and doleful recollections of halcyon days gone by.

But the packaging for this message was insistent invocation of American greatness. As Rachel Maddow's team documented in a montage for MSNBC's convention coverage, almost every single speaker told a story of upward mobility, usually taken from their own family's past: tracing the arc of the American dream that had brought them to the podium.

Part of this is just standard political treacle, a way for, say, an extremely wealthy prep school graduate like Ann Romney, to seem relatable. But the larger reason this was such a dominant theme at the RNC is that the Republican Party's platform and tribal identity are zealously committed to the notion of American exceptionalism, and when people talk about American exceptionalism, this is usually what they mean. [...]

Somewhat oddly almost every single one of the stories of "we-built-it," plucky American success didn't revolve around the speakers own experience of social mobility but rather that of their hardworking relatives and ancestors. It struck me, listening to these invocations of the labors of previous generations as a slightly odd note, a backward looking tour of nostalgia for an America that we are losing. But of course, that's precisely the message of the Republican party this year and its a potent one because it's based on a core reality.

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But of course, Joe Scarborough thinks he does. After going on about how neither of our presidential candidates really understands the "American dream," Scarborough proceeded to explain to the viewers his ideas for what it's going to take to make America great again, which of course included such ridiculous platitudes as "getting government out of the way" while simultaneously calling for free Wi-fi for everyone, rebuilding infrastructure and R&D.

I'm not sure who Scarborough thought was going to pay for those things if not the government, but never mind that. U.S.A.!!! U.S.A.!!! We're number one! We're number one! Our schools are the best! We're the greatest country on the face of the earth! And then Mika burst his bubble with some of that elitist, leftist, America-hating smarty-pants talk about Americans being overweight. Why do you hate America Mika? Joe Scarborough wants to know.

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While bowing down to the corrupt Ralph Reed by showing up at his conference this weekend, the former Senator whose name should not be Googled, Man-on-Dog Santorum let the audience there know that he apparently doesn't think putting our social safety nets in place is part of what's made America "exceptional."

Here's more from TPM -- Rick Santorum: Obama’s Support For Entitlements Shows He Doesn’t Believe America Is Exceptional:

Rick Santorum has a message for President Obama: Despite what you may think, America was pretty awesome before the mid-60s.

Santorum is one of two presidential candidates speaking during the Saturday sessions at the Faith and Freedom Conference in downtown DC. At home before the social conservative crowd today, he offered up a ripping speech that touched on his long history as a national culture warrior.

As is so often the case in a Santorum address -- or a speech by virtually all of the Republicans in contention for the presidential nomination these days -- the subject of American exceptionalism came up. Sanoturm has woven this into his foreign policy speeches before, but today he raised the idea in the context of the entitlement fight.

Obama, Santorum said, thinks that it's the nation's safety net that helps to define America's greatness. This is an example of Obama missing the point about America's inherent exceptional nature, Santorum said. Social conservatives know that America had it goin' on before there was a social welfare system.

"There's one statement that everyone in this room should remember that the President of the United States says, that sums up how the President looks at America," Santorum said. "He said it about 6 weeks ago." Read on...

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From Rep. Grayson's You Tube page:

Former Republican Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani claimed that no attacks happened on US soil 'except' for 9/11. Rep. Alan Grayson responded by pointing out all of the other exceptions the Republicans would like to exclude from history.

Dave N.: You gotta love Alan Grayson. Republicans' are desperate to make Americans forget what an abject failure conservative governance has been. Grayson is one of the few congresscritters actively fighting back:

Grayson: And I realized that I was witnessing the birth of a new form of political discourse from the right wing in this country: The Exception. The Exceptional Exception -- the exception that proves the rule or disproves the rule, as the case may be.

So in the future I'm expecting that we'll hear from the right wing the claim that no cities drowned under the Bush administration -- except for New Orleans. And that there were no wars that were started by mistake under the Bush administration -- except for the war in Iraq. And that the Bush administration added nothing to the federal debt -- except for a half-trillion dollars, which works out to $15,000 for every man, woman and child in this country. And that they respected all of our constitutional rights as Americans -- except when they didn't.

I think we'll hear Republicans claim that the Bush administration managed the economy quite well -- except when they brought it to the brink of national bankruptcy. In fact, they'll claim that the Bush-Cheney administration was a complete success, except for the fact that it was an abject failure -- an abject failure.

In fact, what we learned in Washington for eight years is that the reason why Republicans hate government so much is because they're so bad at it.

It's this willingness to tackle the right-wing media and its talking points that sets Grayson apart from his colleagues. No wonder his fund-raising campaign has been so successful. People want to reward someone who stands up for them.