Curmudgeonly Dudgeon IV
Meanwhile the Washington Post reports that the GOP is “considering” delaying its convention in Minneapolis because of the threat of Hurricane Gustav in . . . New Orleans. The MSNBC crew thought maybe the Repubs just didn’t want to follow Obama’s speech so quickly, but I think the trick is in paragraph two of the post story:
The threat is serious enough that White House officials are also debating whether President Bush should cancel his scheduled convention appearance on Monday, the first day of the convention, according to administration officials and others familiar with the discussion.
Everybody in the Republican National Committee and the McCain campaign knows that George W. Bush is electoral poison. George W. Bush probably even knows it. They’d all like to keep him away from your television during John McCain Week if they can, or at least away from convention television. You, quite properly, hate the man. But it looks bad to disinvite the sitting President from your own party. As Donald Hall had Horace Horsecollar so memorably say,
You liked your nookie well enough
back when you had your teeth.
Gustav is everyone’s plausible excuse to keep George Bush anywhere but Minneapolis. James Dobson should try praying harder.
Comment by Thoreau —
August 29, 2008 @ 2:06 am
Jim,
I don’t think it’s just about Bush. Those Republicans with a few brain cells to rub together (admittedly, a small subset) probably have a vague inkling that if New Orleans drowns again during a GOP administration, this might look really bad for them. At the very least, they’ll need to delay things long enough to come up with some spin.
IMHO, the Republican Party should show some solidarity with the people of New Orleans: Hold the convention in the Big Easy, at the lowest elevation they can find.
I’ll be on the high ground with a sack of rotten tomatoes to throw at anybody who manages to swim out. I would release alligators into the flood zone, but I think the gators deserve better than to have to swim with Republicans.
Comment by kid bitzer —
August 29, 2008 @ 8:49 am
and what about the tomatoes? what are they, chopped liver?
Comment by Chris Quinones —
August 29, 2008 @ 10:19 am
One of the blogs, I forget which, pointed out that if you push the RNC back a week, McCain gets to make his acceptance speech on … wait for it … the eleventh!
POW, verb, 9/11!
Trackback by Unpartisan.com Political News and Blog Aggregator —
August 29, 2008 @ 3:19 pm
GOP Weighs Delaying Convention For Gustav…
Republican officials say they are considering delaying the start of the GOP convention in Minneapoli…