An Idea Whose Time Has Come

Sometimes an idea is so radical, so out there, that it takes time to wrap your mind around the brilliance that’s hidden within it. California Conservative has a thought that’s so far from the conventional wisdom that its crystalline logic is actually transparent. But making it happen will test the very limits of Karl Rove’s genius:

Hold the 2008 GOP presidential convention in San Francisco.

Now, I know what you’re thinking–but just remember what James Taranto wrote a year before the Republican convention was held in Manhattan in 2004:

“In what looked like a mini dress rehearsal for the cacophony of dissent that’s expected to hit the streets of New York City during next summer’s GOP convention, nearly 3,000 demonstrators gathered on Seventh Avenue to protest President Bush as he presided over a $2,000-a-plate fundraiser inside midtown’s Sheraton Hotel on Monday,” the Village Voice reports:

The folks on the street seemed to have little trouble connecting the issues. Antiwar placards demanding “Where are the Weapons of Mass Destruction?” and “End King Geoge’s Reign of Terror!” jostled freely with pro-choice banners and signs denouncing Bush’s “War on Women.” Many in the crowd said they were outraged that the Republican party continues to invoke the attacks of 9/11 as a rallying cry for Bush’s presidency. “I feel like Bush coming to New York is especially hypocritical because he’s done nothing for this city,” said Sarah Beretczki, a 29-year-old illustrator from Brooklyn who sported a sign that read, “My Bush Sheds Its Own Blood.”

We saw some of these people riding the subway Monday night, and it makes us understand why the Republican Party chose New York as the site of its convention. No one pays much attention to protests of a mere fund-raiser, but during the convention TV crews will be unable to resist them–thus treating voters across the country to images of Bush’s opposition as a bunch of extremists and freaks.

And the reaction that the GOP actually did receive in New York in 2004 would be doubled if, astonishingly, they really were heading for the ‘Frisco bay.

Karl–drop me an email, and let’s talk about this…