The upcoming Republican National Convention could be a train wreck. Instead of the usual perfectly choreographed variety show, we’re likely to see an epic battle between take-no-prisoners baggers and what’s left of the GOP establishment. And then there are Ron Paul groupies, many of which are still fighting to take over state delegations.
For example, this is from yesterday’s New Orleans Times Picayune:
Ron Paul forces in Louisiana were willing to employ “dishonest and disruptive tactics” to manipulate voting at the party’s presidential caucuses and try to “hijack” the state convention to “overrule the will of nearly 200,000 presidential primary voters,” according to a brief filed by the Louisiana Republican Party with the national GOP’s Committee on Contests. The state party is defending the 46-member delegation it is sending to the National Republican Convention at the end of the month in Tampa from a challenge by Ron Paul supporters in the state
The challenge on behalf of the Paul supporters portrayed state party Chairman Roger Villere and the party apparatus as operating in a manner “more characteristic of a North Korean politburo than a democratic American political party that honors procedures and majority votes,” in order to keep the Ron Paul majority at the state party convention in Shreveport in June from working its will.
Similar disputes are ongoing in other states as well. The convention begins August 27.
And then there are the baggers. Nobody seems to know what percentage of the delegates are from the Tea Party, but those that are will very likely insist that the platform and agenda reflect their ideology and only their ideology, or else they are going to get very loud and nasty about it.
Mittens wants the convention to be a five-day ode to his magnificence. Will the baggers behave? Will they refrain from booing and walkouts and otherwise doing whatever they can do to draw attention to themselves? Not likely.
Mitt’s vice presidential pick will either alienate the baggers, causing them to act up; or it will please the baggers, causing general election voters to stamped to President Obama. I don’t see a lot of wiggle room for Mitt there.
In short, this convention could be epic. The GOP will be lucky if it doesn’t turn into a gunfight.
I suspect it will be all Country Music, big flags, and cakewalking in Jack boots by the time it rolls around. The GOP does party discipline REALLY well.
maha,
Is it too much to ask for some geriatric version of Chicago in 1968?
Hot and humid weather, strippers, guns, and a crowd of mostly angry old white men – what could possibly go wrong?
With the angry Paulites as the Nihilists, the loony Teabaggers as the Anarchists, and the Old School GOPer’s as the Luddites, I’m hoping for the kind of ‘Mexican-standoff” they had in “Reservoir Dogs:”
http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/21700000/Mexican-Standoff-Reservoir-Dogs-reservoir-dogs-21759777-398-201.jpg
This should be a lot of fun!!!
I’m trying to imagine what a five-day ode to the magnificence of Thurston Howell the Third would sound like. The whinny of dressage horses! The barking of Irish Setters! The ding-ding of bells from the decks of yachts! Whole stanzas of the five-day ode glorifying Joseph Smith, and sung by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir!
And yet I think this is not what will take place in Tampa.
Fear not, we’re still in hurricane season;perhaps the lord will smite the bastards.
I foresee a combination of all of the above; a highly disciplined robo-fest with multiple invasions of anarchy.
I think the media will start trumpeting the possibility of anarchy just as you suggest, maha, because it makes for viewership (rubbernecking and all that). Then the vaunted GOP message discipline will kick in and any dissent will be overwhelmed by the hours and hours of hatred spewed at Obama, and the press will report this as a unified and successful convention.
What’ll be interesting will be how the media covers it. I couldn’t bring myself to watch the Olympics given how awful you’ve been saying the coverage has been. I’ve lately been reading way too many paens to Saint Ronnie – inserted into the most unrelated prose (the Reagan babies are evidently in their career prime) , and I’m certain the “coverage” of the Grenada winner (but really, it’s about the USA and how wonderful we are) would’ve pushed me over the edge.
If the Olympics is any guide, I expect lots of gushing in Tampa over the coronation of Thurston Howell III (loved your description joanr), and many touching personal interest stories, and lots of effort to simply ignore any real news coming from the “multiple invasions of anarchy”. Of course the GOP handlers will be aggressively leading the media, trying their hardest to keep up a phony image, phony on multiple levels. It really might be something to record for future generations, as an example of what lengths people will go to “vault the propaganda”: Maximum BullSh$t – 2012.
In other words, if you thought the coverage of the Olympics was bad, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. The corporate media was just getting warmed up. I think erinyes has the seed of a great idea – for those spiritually inclined, now would be a good time to start praying for a great scourge to relieve the country of these phoneys.
I am hoping for erinyes’s supposition that God will smite the bastards with a hurricane. It put a big smile on my face just thinking about it. Of course, I hope it is done by leaving all other people and their homes alone.
Bonnie,
Are you kidding?
If a hurrican ruined their little convention and destroyed their Convention Center and hotels, but left the rest of Tampa standing, they’ll go out and destroy the rest of the city and state on their own.
We had a preview of that in FL in 2000, with “The Brooks Brothers Riots.”
Now, along with the angry and hate-filled white people, add guns, and the feeling that their God has abandoned them and favored the Liberals, and those riots will seem like a kid’s day out at the petting zoo.
I’m hoping the Lord will hit’em hard enough to make Reince Priebus to change his name to something like Michael Smith. and not hurt the local (as in Me, Swami, and Doug Hughes).
Who in Hell would name his kid Reince Priebus? No wonder he’s screwed up.
If it weren’t for what it would mean to all the innocents in Tampa, I’d be rooting for a hurricane, in hopes of a “GOP Convention meets Katrina Superdome” scenario. It would be amusing to see all those sanctimonious white folks trapped in Tampa while people asked why the heck they didn’t just leave before the storm hit. And I’d pay to watch them try to sort out a delegate credentials fight in a convention center with no electricity.
I think that the best I can hope for is that the “spoiled eogtisit” aspect of their nature wins out over the “follower of authoritarian leaders” aspect, and we get such a floor fight chaos that no undecided voter in the country who sees it will think they want to have those clowns in charge of the country.
Danziger cartoon depicting Romney hood and Friar Ryan. Frightening portrayal in the New Yorker of Paul Ryan:
We need camera crews following them to their night-time entertainment…
OT:
Watch as Ann Coulter loses her thin gruel-like poop about Mitt’s Press Secretary’s gaffe on Sean’s FOX Conservative circle-jerk:
http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/ann-coulter-melts-down-hannitys-show-over-r
The money quote:
“I’m serious. THERE IS NO POINT TO YOU DOING YOUR SHOW. There is no point to us going to a convention and pushing for this man if he is employing morons like this.”
To which Sean says, “I agree.”
I wonder if any of the geriatric rage-zombies who watch FOX “News” sat there after watching this and said, “Hey, I thought this here news channel was ‘Fair and Balanced?’ Is she saying that FOX and Sean and her are pushing for this Mitt guy over the Nigrah?”
SATSQ:
NO!
Of course not.
Them frogs done been boiled.
Maybe the MSM will notice?
ROTFLMAO!
Sometimes I even crack myself up!!!