John Baer: So, there's no rhetoric in Minnesota? Cue the eye roll
MINNETONKA, Minn. - First, I am not making up the name of this town. I believe it's Potawatomi Indian for "two states from the Twin Cities."
MINNETONKA, Minn. - First, I am not making up the name of this town.
I believe it's Potawatomi Indian for "two states from the Twin Cities."
It's where Pennsylvania delegates to the Republican National Convention - which is actually in St. Paul, which is on the other side of Minneapolis from here - are housed.
Let's just say the bus trips are loooooong.
And, so far at least, this hurricane-altered GOP confab strikes me as a tad surreal.
A political party, for example, not exactly beloved by labor opens its convention on Labor Day. Then, in deference to the fact nobody's paying attention since it's a holiday and there's actual news in the Gulf Coast, it decides to cancel its speakers.
"It's gotta be very disappointing to the people who are here," Philly GOP boss Vito Canuso tells me, "but it's understandable and I think they did the right thing."
Actually, it's a political blessing that spares the party and nation President Bush and Vice President Cheney, whose combined approval ratings don't add up to a passing grade on a high school history test.
Speaking of history, the Republicans are meeting in a state that went Democratic in the last eight presidential elections, the longest Dem streak of any state in the nation.
(I won't mention that John McCain's Thursday acceptance speech is the same night as the NFL season opener, Giants vs. Redskins, because the game's early and probably won't go into overtime.)
I assume Republican planning and scheduling is handled by Elmer Fudd.
But the early buzz is about McCain's pick of almost-former-Miss-Alaska Sarah Palin, the gun-toting governor of a state with less than half the population of Philadelphia.
And the news that this soon-to-be VP nominee of the family-values/abstinence-education party has an unmarried, pregnant teenage daughter.
But, seriously, out of wedlock baby-making aside, I asked delegates how Palin squares with McCain's "country first" mantra, his pledge to pick the person best qualified to be president and whether it's just possible the pick is a pander to women.
Renee Amoore, an at-large alternate delegate from the Philly area, says, "I'm excited. I think she's aggressive and brings a lot to the table."
I roll my eyes.
"Look," says Amoore (who is that rarest of Republicans, a person of color), "we shouldn't even be in this race, which I think is moving around on race and gender issues and that's why it's neck and neck and that's why she helps."
At-large delegate and former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum tells me Palin is a "bold pick," reflective of McCain's maverick brand: "Barack Obama blinked and took a guy who's extremely partisan, who's not about change, who's one of those senators who's full of himself, who's emblematic of what's wrong with Washington. John McCain took someone as outside of Washington as you can get and who brings the dynamic of a frontier woman."
And McCain's request to refrain from political rhetoric out of respect for those in the path of Hurricane Gustav?
Pennsylvania House Republican Leader Sam Smith told the delegation breakfast yesterday that some Democrats claim that Gustav disrupting Republicans proves there's a God.
"If it takes a hurricane downsizing a Republican convention to prove to Democrats that there is a God, then this convention is already a success," Smith said to loud cheers.
Former New York Gov. George Pataki went further when he spoke to the delegation.
He said after watching Obama in Berlin he concluded, "I don't want a citizen of the world as our next president, I want an American patriot."
So much for no rhetoric.
As to the Minnetonka location, state party chairman Rob Gleason says hotel selection has lots to do with interparty politics and notes that Pennsylvania went Democratic in the last four presidential races.
"But after we carry Pennsylvania this year," he says, "things will be better next time."
I'd note also that our top Republicans, Arlen Specter and Tom Ridge, support abortion rights, and you know how their party feels about that: Get thee to Minnetonka. *
Send e-mail to baerj@phillynews.com.
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