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08/31/2004 Archived Entry: "Rudy at the GOP"

Posted by steve @ 12:45 AM EST [Link]

NOW THAT WASN'T SO BAD, WAS IT?: When it was announced that people like Rudy Giuliani and Arnold Schwarzenegger were going to be speaking at the RNC this week I got a flood of emails from people decrying the "moderatization" of the convention. They're RINOs! They'll ruin the party!

Right.

Look, despite my libertarian leanings I don't much agree with Giuliani and Schwarzenegger on a lot of issues. A lot of Americans do, however, and if you don't get the point of a nominating convention, here it is: You make your party more attractive then the other guy's party. Not so hard, right? Along the way you feature different voices to show how inclusive you cats are and how you represent more than just a narrow ideological category and you hope to reap a bounty of votes. Remember how well that culture war thing played out a couple of elections ago? Yeah, exactly.

At any rate, I have to say that Giuliani did a good job tonight. He struck the right balance between being aggressive and gracious and I'll bet he made a good impression on a lot of people who aren't sure who they're voting for. In the real world we term it "trying to win elections."

James Lileks was also impressed by Rudy G, stating that "It was like watching a blacksmith at work while he whistled opera."

Ann Althouse has a roundup of Day 1 at the RNC.

Replies: 3 comments

My own view is that it is perfectly fine to have popular pols like Giuliani, McCain and Schwarzenegger speak in prominent slots at the convention, even if they are more liberal than I am. But I would have also liked to see them balanced with some more conservative speakers. Both the GOP and the right have suffered post-Reagan from a lack of conservative stars - why not cultivate some new ones?

Posted by W. James Antle III @ 08/31/2004 04:14 PM EST

More conservative speakers like Rick Santorum, Lindsey Graham, Dick Cheney and Sam Brownback?

Santorum is more conservative than Schwarzenegger is liberal, at least by my political math.

Posted by Steve Martinovich @ 08/31/2004 04:31 PM EST

Brownback and Santorum had inferior speaking slots while Graham was an intro speaker. But from the perspective of a C-SPAN viewer, they were all prominently listed for sure.

Posted by W. James Antle III @ 09/01/2004 12:40 AM EST