A WARM WELCOME–SORT OF
The New York Daily News welcomed the GOP on Sunday with the headline “Play nice!”
A front-page editorial asked the delegates to bear with the checkpoints and barricades, inconveniences New Yorkers have grown accustomed to. And it sought to put the Republicans and their families at ease in other ways too.
“We assure you there’s no need for you to feel like some kind of alien freak just because you’re in what your local captains have probably told you is a notoriously wicked Democratic stronghold. Relax. Our mayor’s a Republican. Sort of.”
–Peter Kendall
MAKING NICE
One Democrat who welcomes the GOP invasion of this Democratic stronghold is former New York City Mayor Ed Koch.
Koch led the campaign to recruit volunteer hosts for this week’s convention at Madison Square Garden. His smiling visage appeared in papers and at bus stops in ads that read: “The Republicans are coming. Make nice.”
About 20,000 volunteers will shuttle delegates from the airports to their hotels, answer questions about such New York-centric matters as where to find the best bagels, and, in general, “make life easier for people who are attending the convention,” Koch said.
The hosts were trained to be polite, to introduce themselves and to ask delegates their names.
Koch isn’t “making nice” to Republicans just to be nice.
“I have said to New Yorkers whenever I’ve talked about the convention that it is important to impress the delegates because many of them are members of Congress,” he said. “We want them to remember New York as a wonderful moment in time, so when we come knocking on their doors, they’ll give us the funding we need.”
But if there is an element of calculation behind Koch’s efforts, his support for the Republican ticket is genuine. This year he’s crossing party lines to vote for President Bush. –Stevenson Swanson
SIGNS OF DISSENT
Some protesters Sunday exercised their freedom of speech simply and earnestly, carrying signs with slogans such as “End the occupation of Iraq.”
Others, though, tried for a laugh.
Among them:
“Four More Wars”
“11/02/04 . . . The end of an error.”
“Orwell was off by 20 years”
“Quagmire Accomplished”
–Peter Kendall
MENDING FENCES
Sen. John McCain, the Arizona maverick who challenged President Bush for the Republican nomination in 2000 and will appear on stage at the convention in support of Bush on Monday night, was asked Sunday about his ultimate political ambition.
“Emperor has always appealed to me,” McCain said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.” Turning more serious, he said: “I’m running for re-election to the Senate. . . . There’s no reason to speculate beyond that.”
McCain also was asked how he could have buried the hatchet from a bruising campaign against Bush four years ago.
“You’ve got to go past it,” McCain said. “You cannot hold a grudge in politics. You have to get past your anger. . . . President Bush and I have a very friendly relationship.”
–Mark Silva
A CLINTON TAG TEAM
The first lady of New York politics and her husband, the former president of the United States, offered a blunt welcome Sunday to Bush and the other Republicans flocking here.
It wasn’t quite a Bronx cheer. But it was more prickly than polite, less a hand extended in friendship than a Noo Yawk-style sock in the nose.
Republicans are staging “sort of a bait-and-switch convention” and waging “a pathetic campaign,” said Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. While she made the rounds of Sunday morning chat shows, her husband, Bill, spoke at a church in Harlem.
“Sometimes I think our friends on the other side have become the people of Nine Commandments,” Clinton said, suggesting that Republicans were ignoring the biblical injunction against bearing false witness by attacking Democratic nominee John Kerry’s military service in Vietnam.
–Los Angeles Times
COP PHOTO OP
New York police officers standing near the Doubletree Guest Suites did not quell any serious disturbances. They did, however, pose for pictures with tourists.
“Can I take a picture with New York’s finest?” asked Janet Anderson, 44, of Toms River, N.J. She posed, as did her friend and first-time visitor to the city Flo Dassau, 33, of Birmingham, Ala.
“I’ve always felt totally safe,” Anderson said when asked why she admired the NYPD.
“We are laughing in the face of the terrorists,” Dassau said. “We are not scared.”
–Ofelia Casillas
NO BIG APPLES
The Secret Service has orders that no apples be allowed inside Madison Square Garden. They are considered projectiles.
–Peter Kendall
