Last Call: Diverse Scenery
Pleszczynski, Wladyslaw
| W• / qV• I m by Wladyslaw Pleszczynski Diverse Scenery FOUR YEARS AGO I SPENT ONLY A NIGHT at the GOP's San Diego convention, but came away with one major impression: There couldn't be a...
...A nineyear-old Polish-American girl from the Detroit area, dressed in lovely Krakowian folk costume, sang the national anthem at the start of another...
...The night before that I caught him on MSNBC teaching Paul Begala a thing or two about racial tolerance in America, this in between his countless appearances on other media and at other convention venues...
...and Barbara on down...
...THEY CHEERED EVERY SPEAKER WITHOUT exception...
...Clueless liberal opinion can insist all it wants that the GOP is hypocritical...
...After the first two days they ridiculed the GOP for not mentioning Clinton or Gore...
...As an RNC official put it, the COP found its table needs "extra leaves...
...McCain is a war hero...
...Naturally, the same sort of Democrat confuses criticism of Clinton with not being nice...
...Not that it mattered...
...It could be Republicans are nice because they don't spend much time at the inovies...
...Everyone there seemed to be feeding offone other...
...Who in his right frequency would end with, "And I am haunted by the vision of what will be...
...Nice people have their priorities in order, vN 82 S ep t e m b e r 2 o o o _9 The American Spectator...
...On Monday night, in a warmup to Laura Bush and Colin Powell, he auditioned as Bert Parks and quizzed reigning Miss America Nicole Johnson about George W.'s Texas...
...A Greek Orthodox archbishop ended one session...
...Or would he have caught on that NR was really honoring Hyde for a long career of staunch prolife work that dwarfs the recent unpleasantness...
...Are you kidding...
...Several prominent rabbis spoke...
...George W. Bush as he posed for "photograph after photograph with young women bearing single yellow roses...
...Gospel singers a threat to GOP values...
...Catholic prelates closed two other sessions...
...after Dick Cheney and Bush mentioned them all too effectively on days three and four, they squawked the GOP had resorted to attack politics...
...In fact, I noted, "it would require a Ben Stein to describe how nice everyone was...
...REPUBLICANS WERE SUPPOSEDLY PUT TO THE test by the diversity extravaganza of Monday night and its subsequent echoes...
...Watts gathered more than 50 black officials, candidates, and delegates onto a stage to explain what was going on: the part), is expanding...
...No one other than Dan Rather could possibly figure out what McCain meant by his closing section...
...Somehow l don't recall Michael Dukakis's being treated similarly by Democrats in 1992...
...Bob Dole also spoke and was treated affectionately, as if 1996 never happened...
...Only a confused Democrat could think it's possible to be a wimp and a brute simultaneously...
...IF TIlE CONVENTION DEMONSTRATED anything, it's that Bush has forced his opponents to play defense...
...OVERLOOKED TOO WAS THE RELENTLESS outreach to nonminority Democratic blocs...
...His rapport with the delegates was instantaneous, though most seemed clueless about his references to "Anyone...
...It's been that way ever since Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp and Newt Gingrich...
...If this is affirmative action, it's affirmative action with Republican characteristics...
...Nice Republicans have their priorities in order...
...W• / qV• I m by Wladyslaw Pleszczynski Diverse Scenery FOUR YEARS AGO I SPENT ONLY A NIGHT at the GOP's San Diego convention, but came away with one major impression: There couldn't be a nicer bunch in the world than Republicans convening...
...In its smugness, liberal opinion forgets that Republicans are partial to believers in God...
...The night before he sat in the presidential box with George and Barbara Bush, whispering confidences to the former president and offering candy to the women seated nearby...
...Anyone...
...and the Latter curve...
...Or maybe he was describing Laura Bush and her twins...
...Not only Laura Bush and Colin Powell on Monday night, but Elizabeth Dole and John McCain on Tuesday, despite the cold and indifferent manner in which the latter two delivered their speeches...
...If Hyde needed vindication it came the next night when Bush declared: "When Congress sends me a bill against partial-birth abortion, I will sign it into law"--and the First Union Arena erupted with the loudest applause of a very loud convention...
...This year, as it happens, both Bush and Ben wound up playing more prominent roles in Philadelphia...
...If I were a Democratic big shot I'd be a lot more worried about Bush's likely inroads in the white ethnic Midwest...
...But what would such a Democrat have made of Wednesday's NationaIReview reception in honor of Rep...
...Henry Hyde, the former impeachment House manager and the nicest of nice Republicans...
...Seriously...
...LAST TIME I SA\V BEN IN PHILADELPHIA HE was disappearing in a sea of delegates, all of them hugging him and having their pictures taken with him...
...At a press conference on Thursday, "permanent" deputy convention co-chairman J.C...
...Polite and nice, sweet and friendly" is how Ben described the conventioneers after it was all over...
...He was in heaven, his face in full beam...
...Or maybe all the Bushes, from George Sr...
...Dole is married to one...
...They're also the first to welcome any American who'd prefer not to be beholden to A1 Sharpton or Jesse Jackson...
...Typical, as I wrote in this space, were the "enthusiastic crowds" that surrounded charming and "perfectly handsome" Texas Gov...
...Would he have found it consoling that the 'T' word never came up...
...But when has any black on the Democratic plantation been free to declare, as Condoleezza Rice did, that her party treats her like an individual...
Vol. 33 • September 2000 • No. 7
