The National Republican Convention Kicks Off Today

Today is the big day the GOP starts the 2004 RNC. On the schedule tonight are New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, and Arizona Senator John McCain. Here is the full prime time schedule. For those of us in that live in Maine, here is a link to our delegation's page. Find your state's delegation here.

Of course, the anti-Bush, anti-war, protestors were out in full force on the streets of New York. Remember, the squeeky wheel get the most oil, just like the whinning protestors get the most liberal news coverage. Rich Lowry has a great article about his protest experience.

I marched yesterday. With a friend, I walked with the protesters from roughly 25th and 7th Avenue, past Madison Square Garden, where everyone booed and hissed (and the giant sign outside flashed "Thank you New York!" anyway), east on 34th Street, and then down to 5th Avenue to the march's conclusion at Union Square.

You have to admire the protesters' inventiveness — who knew how many ways there are to express your hatred of Bush and Cheney? Although some of the protesters are, for all their sloganeering, struck mute by the slightest opposition. A guy in a VFW hat was off on a sidewalk at one point, attacking Kerry and defending the U.S. military. A protest girl walked up close to him and just stuck out her middle finger at him for a long time with a self-satisfied look on her face, as though she had come up with the cleverest gesture ever.

Mostly, though, the whole thing seemed, as far as I could tell, to be motivated by an incoherent and sputtering animus toward Bush. Here is a brief recounting of my interactions with various marchers. They shouldn't necessarily be taken as representative. After each talk I had with someone my friend would say, "You know, there are reasonable people here too." Maybe. But it wasn't at all hard to find people who were not a great credit to the cause of peace and justice.

A kid was holding a sign, "Stop the war on youth, from here to Najaf."

"So," I asked, "do you support al Sadr?"

"I do as long as he's resisting U.S. imperialism."

"OK, so you support Islamic fundamentalism?"

"No," he said, walking away.

"Well, he's an Islamic fundamentalist," I said.

He came back up to me, "Just because you support the youth doesn't mean you side with an extremist."

"Sadr is an Islamic extremist, he's very clear about it."

"It's their mosque."

"He seized the mosque by force!"

"You're wrong," he said. "He supports elections."

"No, he doesn't! He opposes elections."

"Well," he said, walking away again, "they are U.S.-supported elections. Of course he opposes U.S.-supported elections."

Then, this goateed, cigarette-smoking little Chomsky walked off for good.

Mr. Lowry also points out that Protest Warrior made an appearance. Good for them. Here is what Rich had to say about them.

Finally, there is the endearing cluelessness. We passed a group of counter-protesters from the group protestwarrior.com, who were holding up signs mocking the protesters: "World Workers Party...the last thing we do is work." A guy just ahead of us in the march was covered in green make-up to look like the statue of liberty and was wearing just a robe, with a skeletal, scary-looking set of teeth painted on his face and — for some reason — a little flower in his ear. By any standard, this guy was dressed like a freak. But he stopped us to ask, in scandalized and mystified tones, of the counter-protesters, "Who were those people?"

This is going to be a great week with a lot of news happening, from clueless protestors to the climatic speech by President Bush on Thursday at the RNC. Stay tuned.