UNCONVENTIONAL WISDOM
Sure, Democrats may outnumber Republicans 5-1 in New York City, but it’s not so crazy for the party to hold a convention here.
That, at least, is the view of Lawrence Mone, president of the Manhattan Institute, a conservative free-market think tank. The city’s remarkable renaissance during the 1990s was due in no small part to traditionally Republican policies, he argues.
Such as: lower taxes, a revamped city welfare program that required many recipients to get jobs, a crackdown not only on major crimes but also minor “quality of life” infractions, and increased accountability in the public education system.
All of those policies were the work of former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a Republican.
“Republicans should embrace coming here,” said Mone, who organized a pre-convention conference on how “compassionate conservative” ideas had benefited New York City.
–Stevenson Swanson
PACHYDERM PARADE
Retailers not thrilled by the fact that the Republicans are in town have found many ways to register their displeasure. Generations, a clothing store near Madison Square Garden, posted a sign in front of its 8th Avenue location to advertise what it calls its “Annoying Republican Convention” sale.
And Seasons, a theater district florist, has a line of small gray elephants marching across its windows, under the heading, “The circus is coming to town.” Each elephant is labeled with what the shop owner apparently feels are the sins of the GOP: “religious zealotry,” “deceit,” “homophobia,” “Saudi oil money” and “Halliburton.”
–Stevenson Swanson
A KEY ENDORSEMENT
Lamar Alexander has long liked a good piano.
Back when he was running for the Republican presidential nomination in 1996 and 2000, Alexander often would strike up a tune as he campaigned. But now, as a U.S. senator from Tennessee, he encounters fewer living-room pianos.
So on Wednesday, Alexander couldn’t pass up a visit to Steinway & Sons. He perused the rows of fine pianos, and in an afternoon interview he struck up a melodic metaphor for the Republicans rallying at their party convention in New York City.
“Good choirs practice. They don’t sound good on Sunday morning if they don’t practice,” Alexander said, noting that the days of Republican speechmaking have inspired the party’s activists. “You’ve got to get in harmony. That’s why we’re here.”
–Jeff Zeleny
THAT’S MARTHA, NOT MICHAEL, MOORE
Few Republicans appreciate the importance of image the way Martha Moore does. One of the longest-serving Republican committeewomen in history, Moore attended every national convention from the time she joined the GOP in 1952 until she decided to retire from convention-going this year.
The retired English professor from Ohio, now 85, was a stickler about some things: All delegates should be in their seats when the gavel was pounded and the convention called to order each night. And delegates were there to conduct official party business, not pass the time reading books or newspapers.
“She’d tell people: Don’t be reading the newspaper, or, God forbid, yawning, because the cameras will catch you,” Bob Bennett, the chairman of the Ohio Republican Party, remembered on Wednesday.
During a boring speech the other day, Bennett saw a delegate from his state reading a newspaper. And, just like Moore would have, he took charge.
“Put that away,” he told the man. “The cameras are bound to catch you.”
That night, when Bennett got back to his hotel room, there was a message waiting from Moore. She’d been watching the convention on TV.
“Everyone looks real good,” she said.
–Kirsten Scharnberg
HASTERT VS. SOROS
In the midst of a feel-good Republican convention, House Speaker Dennis Hastert has picked a public and increasingly nasty fight with one of the Democratic Party’s biggest rainmakers.
In a letter sent Tuesday, George Soros, the billionaire New York investment fund manager who has raised millions for Democrats, demanded that Hastert apologize for implying that Soros might get his money from “overseas or drug groups.”
Hastert, an Illinois Republican, made the comments Sunday on a Fox News program. The comment seemed to temporarily stun host Chris Wallace, who said, “Excuse me?”
“George Soros has been for legalizing drugs in this country, so I mean he’s got a lot of ancillary interests out there,” Hastert responded.
“This past Sunday, on national television, you suggested that I might be a criminal simply because I have exercised my 1st Amendment rights to dissent from the policies of the Bush administration,” Soros wrote. “I must respectfully insist that you either substantiate these claims — which you cannot do because they are false — or publicly apologize for attempting to defame my character and damage my reputation.”
In a response to Soros on Wednesday, Hastert resolutely did not apologize. “I never implied you were a criminal and I never would,” Hastert wrote. “That’s not my style.”
In the one-and-a-half-page letter, Hastert offered no olive branches, instead taking yet another opportunity to square off with Soros.
“I think that the policies that you and others have promoted are dangerous, radical and extreme,” he wrote.
–Rudolph Bush
