The Republican Convention. What a downer.
It’s like an awkward wake at a cheap funeral parlor for a person nobody liked. I didn’t pay any attention last night so like most Americans tonight was my entre into the Republican “festivities.” It kicked off with Laura Bush appearing like a character out of “Mad Men” and vacantly monotoning some biting remarks about Obama and Democrats in general. Then George W. came on via satellite with a reminder that presidenting is hard, but he’s looked into McCain’s eyes.
Joe Lieberman stared into the camera and implored Democrats and Independents to vote for the white guy McCain. He invoked Clinton then repeated that this is a time to put country above party. But what olive branch has McCain extended to anyone in the center lately? All his advances have been to the right. Sarah Palin is a direct appeal to the right wing base and the official GOP platform adopted yesterday is a joke – pro-offshore drilling, closing the door on immigrants, and in favor of constitutional amendments to ban both gay marriage and abortion. The Family Research Council called the platform “the most conservative, pro-life and pro-family platform in Republican party history.” On climate change, the document says we shouldn’t fall for “the doomsday climate change scenarios peddled by aficionados of centralized command-and-control government.”
Wow. Doomsday scenarios peddled by aficionados of centralized command-and-control government. I almost admire their style.
And throughout this clusterfuck, everyone’s smiling along like this is the way the nominating convention precipitating the most important election in a generation is supposed to go.
Whereas last week the press scrutinized and criticized the Democrats as if the fate of the world hung on every intonation, so far this week the press, as Rachel Maddow says, is rounding McCain and the Republicans up to the nearest thing that isn’t utterly humiliating.
Throughout the DNC, some form of Hillary-Obama-drama made it into many more news reports than were warranted; it seemed like every disaffected Hillary supporter who’d talk got her quote picked up. The story of the week was how divided the Democratic Party was. Yet tonight we had Bush via satellite, not even in the same city as the rest of his party. It’s almost sickening to think how relieved they must have been about Gustav.
But it doesn’t stop there — divisions in the ranks of the Republicans also came in the form of 10,000 people attending the Ron Paul Rally for the Revolution today. While Ron Paul as a write-in probably won’t take a lot of votes, Libertarian Party candidate Bob Barr (whose website looks strikingly like Obama’s, right down to the Gotham font), is doing not so bad right now. Barr, running with Wayne Allyn Root, is polling at 8% in Ohio, 10% in Colorado and 11% in New Hampshire.
Third party candidates can screw with shit. Perot, Nader…Barr? Barr’s gotta attract more people leaning toward McCain than toward Obama, right? Maybe Democrats should somehow channel energy toward bolstering Barr/Root?
