December 17, 2003
THANK YOU, TERRY McAULIFFE:
W. Is a Helium Balloon (Ben Smith, 12/17/03, NY Observer)
The President's head, portrayed by a small yellow helium balloon, was greeted with great joy by television producers and technicians, who took their sitings from the skyboxes during a "media walk-through" of the convention site staged by Republican officials Dec. 16.The day was a demonstration of the precision of Mr. Bush's Republican machine: Convention planners know where the Presidentís head will be, where the cameras that photograph that head will be, and where the bathrooms will be when a crowd of Republicans and reporters numbering about 50,000 comes to town next Aug. 30 to Sept. 2 for the first Republican National Convention held in New York in the history of the United States.
The Bush bunch is one well-organized team. And that was the thrust of a preview of the 2004 Republican convention that will dominate New York City next summer: a mountain of technical details for a convention that will launch the final stage of the Presidentís drive for re-election next year.
The New York event struck a sharp contrast to the vague preview that Democrats offered reporters in Boston, the site of their 2004 convention, two weeks earlier.
"This blows Boston out of the water," said Peter Barnes, the Washington bureau chief for Hearst-Argyle Television. "If the Republicans are this organized for their convention, imagine the campaign."
Here's what the Republicans have: incumbency, money and a setting that will inevitably remind Americans of the President's performance in the same city the week after Sept. 11, 2001. And in the shadow contest between each party's convention planners, the G.O.P. is using those advantages to full effect, slotting the pieces of their gala into place as the Democrats do the usual Democratic struggle, searching for a nominee, a message and a plan.
That the Democrats blew having their convention in NYC continues to boggle the mind. Posted by Orrin Judd at December 17, 2003 10:47 AM
So will someone explain to me how having the convention the same week as 9/11 offsets the disadvantage of potentially being left off the ballot in some states like here in Illinois?
PS - The anti-immigration comment of an "RT" yesterday was not me.
Posted by: Rick T. at December 17, 2003 11:48 AMBush doesn't need Illinois to win, and the outrage among the general public nationally over the Democrats deliberately leaving the president off the ballot will serve as compensation in other states, especially close ones from 2003, such as Iowa, New Meixco, West Virgina, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and, yes, Florida.
Posted by: John at December 17, 2003 7:33 PMThere is no way that a state will deny (even under code) a major party nominee a place on the ballot, especially an incumbent. SCOTUS would fix this in about 5 minutes - even after their pass last year in NJ.
Posted by: jim hamlen at December 17, 2003 8:50 PMAgree with the John - the outrage over IL if the Dem governor and Dem statehouse deny putting Bush on the ballot because the convention was a few days after the deadline would be terrible PR. That said, the way things are going Bush won't need this particular uproar to win the states you mention.
Posted by: AWW at December 17, 2003 11:07 PM