RNC Snorefest Drives Journalists to Join Ron Paul Rally

The Xcel Center in St. Paul, Minneapolis, wasn't in the path of Hurricane Gustav, but, judging from the defections in the ranks of Republicans citing it as the reason they were MIA in St. Paul, Minnesota, on Labor Day (and the Tuesday after), Minnesota might well have been.

First among the no-shows were President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Last time Hurricane Katrina struck in New Orleans, President Bush waited 84 days to make it down to Louisiana for photo ops. This prompted Barack Obama, during the final night of the Democratic Convention in Denver, Colorado in his acceptance speech to decry a president who "sat on his hands while a major American city drowned."

The Bush administration's Powers-that-Be responded this time by rushing off to the Gulf, so that their inaction last time would not reflect poorly on this season's Republican candidate, John McCain.

Therefore, Bush was immediately off to the races (in his case Texas), rather than the eye of the storm, which, as of midnight Monday was closer to Mobile and other Gulf Coast states, rather than Texas. (It was explained that the President felt his presence in the storm area might detract from relief efforts.)

Vice President Cheney also didn't show. This distancing from the current unpopular administration suited John McCain just fine. Arnold Schwarzenegger phoned it in, citing a budget crisis in California. Republicans were left with Laura Bush and Cindy McCain to carry the speech torch into battle. All eyes and all major press were on the Gulf. Katie Couric was here earlier, but, like Anderson Cooper et al, she took off to rub shoulders with Geraldo and the gang in the windswept, rain-drenched streets of New Orleans.

By Tuesday, Hurricane Gustav had been downgraded to a tropical storm, but it appeared that the Republican Convention was not going to be "a really big show." (Picture Ed Sullivan saying that, if you're old enough to remember who he was.) "Wouldn't be appropriate," said one missive sent out.

Oklahoma Republican delegate Porter Davis, who had come over from the Xcel Center to be present at the Ron Paul Rally, for which 10,000 seats had been sold at $17 a pop, chatted with me in the aisles, saying, "This is where the real action is; it's so different over on the floor of the RNC with all the jack-booted Republicans inside."

Since nobody very important was left inside the Xcel Center in St. Paul (or so it seemed) and most of the day's scheduled Democratic activities were canceled, as well ("more time for the delegates to shop," the local papers trumpeted), the prevailing wisdom was that Thursday, the last night of the convention, when McCain will accept his party's nomination, loomed as the only "bright spot" on the horizon of an otherwise vast wasteland of canceled events and addresses. Journalists were forced to look elsewhere for stories, and I ended up here.

The demonstrators on the steps of the Capitol were being arrested in droves (180 of them, the local newspaper said) and sprayed with something noxious (tear gas? pepper spray?), so I chose a safer alternative venue, the Target Center in Minneapolis, where Ron Paul's supporters were holding a "Rally for the Republic."

When I arrived, Ron Paul was addressing the assembled masses -- all hundred or so of them who had gotten there early. A press representative of the Pittsburgh Press asked Representative Paul, "Where do you go from here?"

Paul's answer: "This is not a plan to start a third party. Starting a new party right now would certainly not be my goal." He hedged on whether he would endorse Bob Barr, saying, "I don't foresee endorsing a particular candidate."

The Libertarian ex-candidate for president was asked if he would rather be inside the Excel Center, addressing the assembled delegates there. He said, "My floor passes have been severely limited. I was treated as a second-class citizen. I would have to have a chaperon. I was told I would be allowed to bring three staff members, but then they said no staff. They (the GOP planning the convention) had told us we would have free access and now they have apparently reneged on that."

Same deal with my passes, too, Congressman Paul. (It's like the song, "First they say you can, and then you can't.")

Dr. Paul appeared irritated with this curtailing of his ability to access the floor of the Republican convention, noting that he had "been elected 10 times." He also decried the expense involved in staging the conventions themselves, saying, "Why do the 2 major parties, which are really one party, get $33 billion from the government to run their campaigns?"

So, Ron Paul supporters began setting up their Campaign for Liberty and/or Rally for the Republic, with Tucker Carlson (MSNBC Senior Correspondent) kicking off the festivities, saying, "I have never done anything like this before. I voted for Ron Paul when I was in college in 1988. He is a sincerely decent, gentle human being with zero interest in controlling other people."

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the presumptive Republican candidate, John McCain, was going "north to Alaska" to select a vice presidential running mate, a little-known, 44-year-old beauty queen whose only previous experience in government, prior to her upset win as Governor, was as Mayor of a city of 9,000 people. Apparently north to Michigan was not far enough north.

Democratic candidate Richard Machacek in Denver would have made a bet on Romney, while I suggested that McCain would select a woman, but I thought the woman would be Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, who had a national presence and would have brought in both the woman vote and the Texas vote. James Carville, Clinton's Democratic strategist, was quoted as saying that, if anyone thinks that McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate would convince Hillary Clinton's people to defect to McCain, "he'd be lucky to get 18 of her 18 million" votes.

The idea that one woman candidate is interchangeable with another, regardless of the candidate's positions on the issues was brought up. Very few would confuse Sarah Palin's political convictions with those of Hillary Clinton, so Carville has a point.

In a roundtable discussion by Charlie Rose various talking heads weighed in on McCain's "Hail Mary" pass in picking Palin, Governor of Alaska, to be one heartbeat away from the Presidency. Most of those speaking (Cokie Roberts, "Time" magazine's correspondent) seemed to think that the weeks ahead would determine how Palin stood up to national media scrutiny and whether she would need a crash course on various world issues before she is turned loose on the campaign trail.

The race just gets curiouser and curiouser with details of Palin's 17-year-old daughter, Bristol's, pregnancy and her husband's DUI arrest in years of yore. In a poll on the front page of AOL, with 147,367 responding, 52% said that the "vetting" of the Republican candidate for Vice President had been either "poor" or "fair." Very few respondents went with excellent. McCain, the maverick, has become the new "decider" and the future weeks will be interesting. What was noted by the Talking Heads on Charlie Rose was that there seemed to be a big disconnect between the way the rest of the country perceives McCain's VP pick and how those in St. Paul for the convention have taken the news. Apparently, on the floor of the Xcel Center, "seldom is heard a discouraging word," but, elsewhere, many of us are scratching our heads in dismay.