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- Alex Castellanos: It's not too early to name the winners and losers of the RNC
- He says Ann Romney and Paul Ryan helped Mitt's cause
- He says holding convention in a hurricane zone is a mistake, but shortened conventions work
- Castellanos: Chris Christie is a force, but not yet a leader
Editor's note: Alex Castellanos, a CNN contributor, is a Republican consultant and the co-founder of Purple Strategies. Follow him on Twitter: @alexcast
Tampa, Florida (CNN) -- Mercilessly, the 2012 GOP convention in Tampa is not yet over. Mitt Romney will speak in a few hours. Clint Eastwood is pulling the cover from his Gran Torino. Jeb Bush, I suspect, is getting ready to defend his name and his cause.
It is not too early, however, to draw a few conclusions. My takeaways from this fine event, so far, are as follows:
Ann Romney added dimension to Mitt Romney. We see more in him now, through her eyes, if not our own.
Paul Ryan passed the first and most important test of a VP nominee, "Do no harm." Ryan did not say he could see the deficit from his porch.
Paul Ryan helps because he adds the prospect of action and reform to the ticket, helping to lead them into the future. He is an agent of change. What Barack Obama had last time in a slogan, "hope and change," Mitt Romney has now in a running mate.
Condoleezza Rice would have been a great VP pick and needs to be somewhere in a Romney administration. This woman can play more than golf.
Susana Martinez is moving up fast on the outside rail for national office but has a long way to go.
President Obama tried to send Joe Biden to Tampa but our VP had to cancel because of the storm. Both the Obama campaign and Republicans were disappointed.
Conventions are ridiculously overburdened with security. Note to the Secret Service: If you put "Secret Service" on your vest in big yellow letters, it is no longer a secret.
When you start talking about humanizing your candidate, you are dehumanizing your candidate.
Clint Eastwood's speech, whatever he says, will make the GOP's day.
If Obama loses, "you didn't build that" may become the biggest gaffe in presidential campaign history, and the most revealing, too.
If nothing else, the Christie speech proved we are the party of the Big Tent.
There is a great bar in Ybor City, the Bad Monkey. You don't have to bring a bad monkey to enter. They have plenty and, upon request, will fly a screaming "bad monkey" for you.
Conventions, as part of a campaign, have to change what people think. Nearly 70% of Americans think we are on the wrong track. Chris Christie told us we were on the wrong track. If you tell voters what they already know, they stay where they already are.
Wisconsin may lose a congressman, but Mitt Romney has gained a son. If anything happens to Romney, Paul Ryan will become president and inherit 1/6th of Romney's money.
Rand Paul's speech was chloroform via teleprompter. He lacks his father's wit and humor. The next lap of Paulites are in big trouble.
In politics, winning isn't everything: You can still lose by winning the wrong war. Republicans may win the war over Medicare while they should be fighting a more relevant conflict, the war to create jobs and growth.
Paul Ryan is a catfish noodler. He wades into a muddy river, sticks his hand in a catfish's mouth and pulls it out of a hole. We now have a perfectly balanced ticket because my guess is Mitt Romney has never done that.
The next Republican to place a convention in a hurricane zone in August will have his head held under water for the duration of any storm.
Chris Christie may be a force, but he is not yet a leader. Babe Ruth, disappointingly, bunted.
Conventions are fading into the past and this may be the last great parade of GOP elephants. Any convention that can be shortened to three days can be abridged to two days, one day, and then none.
Lastly, New Democrats have, for the first time, a counterpart: in Tampa in 2012, the New Republican was born. It turns out, we do believe in evolution.
Stay tuned. We have 67 days yet to go.
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