Here I go again

I am so cynical, especially when it comes to the GOP.  Really, I know that I appear to be so harsh on them, but they just make it so easy, you know?  Every time I think that I need to focus on something else lest my ISP suddenly "disappear", I discover something else about the conservatives that I just can't help opining on.

In continuation of the reaction of people to the presence of images of 9/11 in the President's first advertisements I say this: you ain't seen nothing yet.  Just wait until the Republican National Convention.  Since the GOP is the incumbent party in the White House, their convention will be second this year, after the Democrats meet in Boston in late July.  Traditionally the conventions are a few weeks apart.  However this year they are five weeks apart.

Why?  So the GOP can have their convention in September.  In New York City.

Their "official" reason for the gap is that the Summer Olympics in Athens take place in mid-August.  How convenient that the Olympiad was set up in such a way to force the Republicans to meet in September, when they just happened to be meeting in NYC.  I'm sure the powers that be considered the potential inappropriateness of the timing of the event being so close to 9/11, but then I am sure that a great deal of Republican delegates are also US Olympic athletes and thus would not be able to attend the convention.

Of course I find this disgusting.  Why doesn't the GOP tap dance all over Ground Zero while they are at it?  The thing is, it's a brilliant political move when you think about it.  Who cares about decorum?  What does taste matter?  There will be many undecided voters still in September, so why not have the subliminal message of 9/11 present during the entire convention?  That's politics.

It's not like I expect the Democratic convention to be free of windbags and overkill, of course, but I just cannot see them doing the same thing if Al Gore was president instead.  No way.  They'd show a little more respect.  As it is, the GOP convention will be a mixture of religion, Rudy Guliani, and repeated attempts to remind us that we should be scared to death yet safe in the rocking arms of George W.

See the next entry for an interesting twist to this timing.