An Unacceptable Acceptance
Lee on Aug 30 2008 at 10:59 pm | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Election 2008, Lee's Page
Well, here is an embarrassing prospect. It seems the Republican leadership may boycott the Republican convention in Minnesota, for fear of a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico.
The top elected Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, was already boycotting. But now we learn that President Bush is said to be unlikely to attend, whilst Senator McCain may deliver his acceptance speech via satellite.
One would hope someone could prevail on both the president and the senator that this would represent egregious folly after a flawless, unifying Democratic convention, with its leadership in attendance. Evidently that’s something of a fortuitous luxury when the wind blows these days.
It should be plain that only an appearance of fear and disarray could possibly be conveyed by the abstention of Arnold, Bush and McCain from their own convention. The Republicans wouldn’t have hesitated to level such charges, had such a similarly ridiculous plan been proposed by the Democrats for Denver.
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Meh. The problem is that, regardless of the lack of any merit in the accusations leveled at the Bush Adminstration over Katrina, the narrative has stuck. The Republicans are commendably cognizant of that fact, and don’t want to be broadcast over ever major media network celebrating their largely ceremonial convention while New Orleans drowns again. Smart politics is all that is.
Plus, they really don’t need the attention after the Palin pick, especially since McCain has pretty much locked up the media cycle for the next few weeks even if the convention is delayed — possibly even longer.
I’m sitting right in the current projected bullseye of this storm (about 60 miles northwest of New Orleans) and I say, have your convention as you planned it. The last thing we’re going to need is a bunch of politicians falling all over themselves to appear concerned and getting in the way of the people who are actually working to clean up and fix things.
That goes for Republicans AND Democrats–if you’re just coming for a photo op, stay the hell away. Especially you, Michael Moore.
MichaelW alludes to the root problem. The Democratic rhetoric has worked. They pounded the lies down the throats of the sheeple and now the lie has become the truth. Strategically this is brilliant. They have won. They have caused the right to second guess its behaviour. Remind me again who started using the “big lie”?