The upcoming Republican Party convention

DAILY EXPRESS
Inside and Out

by Chris Strohm
Only at The New Republic Online | Post date 08.30.04

While anti-Bush protestors streamed through the streets yesterday, Log Cabin Republicans held a swank gathering in Midtown to talk about their party's platform. George Pataki, Rudy Guiliani, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Arlen Specter were among the invited guests. Guiliani and Schwarzenegger didn't show, but the prospect of finding a number of key Republicans in one place apparently prompted a group called Gays Against Bush to protest outside the gathering. Members of Gays Against Bush say they are appalled by the GOP platform. Funny thing is, so are the delegates they were protesting.

Inside and outside the Log Cabin Republicans' event yesterday, there was striking agreement that Bush's platform and presidential campaign have been hijacked by the far right. "There are two Republican parties right now," said Patrick Guerriero, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans. "There's a party platform and a radical right agenda, and then there's a group of inclusive Republicans. It's time the party made a choice to be either a party of inclusion or a party that totally caters to the radical right."

Make no mistake about it: Log Cabin Republicans are true conservatives. The group supports the GOP on national defense and tax policy, and endorsed Bush in 2000. Guerriero believes about 1 million gays and lesbians voted for Bush in the last election. But he says the president is now in jeopardy of losing his group's endorsement, which will be made after the convention. "The reality is that when you marginalize gay and lesbian Americans in your platform and you try to marginalize them in the Constitution of the United States, it's difficult to assume that you're going to hold onto the support of those million gay and lesbian votes," he said.

Gay Republicans say they will be listening closely to the signals that speakers at the convention send their way. California Delegate Chris Bowman, who is secretary of the San Francisco Republican Party and the San Francisco chapter of the Log Cabin Republicans, said about 50 out of 4,600 delegates and alternates to this year's convention are openly gay. He, like other Log Cabin Republicans, wants to hear Bush say he's against hate crimes and discrimination based on sexual orientation in housing and work.

They will, of course, almost surely be disappointed--just as they were almost surely disappointed yesterday. Log Cabin Republicans may believe social moderates like Pataki represent the future of the Republican Party. But Pataki didn't mention anything about gay rights or the GOP's anti-gay platform in his address to the group on Sunday; in fact, speaking to a group of gay Republicans, he failed to even say the word "gay."

Specter actually gave the best speech yesterday, saying that those who support gay rights are on the right side of history. "When you talk about gay rights you talk about fundamental rights of equality. That's a civil rights issue and you ought not count votes on it," he said. Guerriero, of course, agrees. He is betting that the Republican Party's base will shift in the coming years as pressure mounts to embrace gays and lesbians. "It's going to be impossible four years from now," he said, "to run a campaign that would directly marginalize gay and lesbian Americans." Unfortunately for the Log Cabin Republicans, it remains very possible in 2004.

Chris Strohm is a reporter living in Washington, D.C.

SIGN OF THE TIMES: After lunch with GOP chairman Ed Gillespie, I spent the day yesterday with the protesters--or the "supporters of John Kerry," as Ed called them. Two observations are worth passing on. One is that the dominant Bush puns among anti-Bush folks have dramatically shifted from the horticultural to the scatological. The uproot the Bush signs were rare, replaced with musings such as Somewhere between Bush and Dick we got screwed, the only Bush I trust is my own--a popular slogan on woman's t-shirts--and, simply, lick Bush. I think I know what explains the shift. In the last four years, opponents of the president have gone from believing he is an idiot to believing he is a threat to civilization. Calling him "shrub," which was popular in 2000, no longer does the trick. Now, most Bush-haters think he's a ... well you know.

The other thing I noticed was how much the mainstream protesters despise the anarchists, who seemed bent on getting themselves arrested. From my perch below the Fox News jumbotron at Seventh Avenue and 34th Street I watched as a group of black-clad kids wearing bandanas on their faces lit something on fire in front of Madison Square Garden. As smoke filled Seventh Avenue, they booked around the corner and down 34th Street. Halfway down the block, they stopped, huddled together, and waited for the cops to descend upon them. Some opened up umbrellas and one threw a small rubber ball at the approaching police. The cops seemed to realize they were out-numbered. At one point the small group of cops and the anarchists faced off in opposing columns in the middle of the street. The cops slowly backed away as the anarchists approached them. It sort of looked like a small-scale version of that scene from the first days of the Iraq war when American soldiers slowly retreated in the face of a crowd of Iraqis protecting a holy site in Najaf. But a few minutes later the cops closed off the protest route, forcing thousands of demonstrators to pause in front of the Garden, and flooded the block with a massive show of riot police, emergency vehicles, police motorcycles, vans, and horse-mounted cops. After some small scuffles, the cops nabbed a few of the people who they believed had either lit the fire or who had antagonized them in the subsequent face-off. Some protesters shouted typical anti-cop remarks like, "Horses shouldn't carry pigs!" But what was more remarkable was that many protesters condemned the idiot anarchists rather than the cops. One guy in jogging garb from a group called Run Against Bush started a chant of "Lock them up!" Another woman, spotting a female anarchist on the sidewalk, actually ran across the street and smacked her. "For what?" she yelled. It was a pretty good question.

--Ryan Lizza

Saw footage of a Democrat affiliated hooligan beating a cop unconscious. Bad PR.

...she ran across the street and smacked her. Another good laugh.

These people are scum, IMO...and their opinion of Bush makes Bush look good.

These are the kinds of scenes most folks predicted would alienate the Middle American voter from the Democrats. It doesn't have to be the Democrats doing it. People just wonder where these protesters were during the Dem convention; why they seem to come out of the woodwork against Republicans

At this most meta of moments, the right-wingers disguised as liberals had adopted the ineffective anger of the group they purported to mock, while the left-wingers disguised as Republicans had wisely embraced the upper crust's bonhomie. [..] The [former's] unequivocal defeat suggests that a decades-old piece of conventional wisdom about American politics--that the left takes itself too seriously and that the right is better at projecting sunny good humor--holds even when left and right are being played by each other.

And what the **** is "a Democrat affiliated hooligan"?

Any random a*shole who's against Bush is now "Democrat affiliated"?



Ah, the wonders of Orwellian language ... Lenin woulda loved it.

I guess the funniest moment was when Micheal Moore was LOUDLY booed.

McCain liked it so much after all the booing, he said it again!

That disengenuous filmmaker!

<thankfully, someone with more speech problems than Bush...>

I do like Ahnoldt.

I hear he's doing well in California. Against all odds.

I finally arrived here in 1968. What a special day it was. I remember I arrived here with empty pockets but full of dreams, full of determination, full of desire.

The presidential campaign was in full swing. I remember watching the Nixon-Humphrey presidential race on TV. A friend of mine who spoke German and English translated for me. I heard Humphrey saying things that sounded like socialism, which I had just left.

But then I heard Nixon speak. Then I heard Nixon speak. He was talking about free enterprise, getting the government off your back, lowering the taxes and strengthening the military.