Blogging the Convention, Not. Day One.

Not in New York --

Actually, you couldn’t pay me to attend another Republican National Convention, even as a loyal opposition blogger. I have already been to a Republican convention, as a kid, and it left such an impression that I’m really not sure I’ve ever been quite right since.

It was 1976 in Kansas City, and the Reaganites were still trying to wrest the nomination away from President Ford. The Hall, so bright with TV lights and all the white faces that I had to wear shades, was filled with two of my favorite types of white people:

• Country club CEO-types and their blue-hair wives (not many women were actual delegates) who complained incessantly about how high income taxes and government regulations were squeezing the rich. “It’s just not fun being rich in this country any more, daa’ling,” one women said as she patted me on the head. “It’s that damned OSHA,” chimed in her husband.
• And then there were the minions of the Chreeest-yin Right, making their first appearance at a GOP convention, supporting Ronald Reagan. These were primarily cheap-suited anti-abortionists from the south and west, wearing sincere smiles, carrying around Bibles and asking you to come to their prayer group after the convention session. I immediately translated the words “prayer group” as “no booze”, so I never bowed my head in prayer with them. At first glance, they could be mistaken for “nice guys,” but then something like “Gerald Ford is a baby-killer” would come out of their mouths and you would just want to back away, slowly. What really creeped me out was that these people assumed that I, as a cheap-suited young teenager, was probably one of them. “Is your daddy a pastor?” one of them asked me, patting me on the head. These were the people who rode Nelson Rockefeller out of the party on a rail that year, forcing Ford to dump Rocky as his V-P and put Bob Dole on the ticket, and in so doing, stamped out the last vestiges of the liberal wing of the Republican party.

Rocky and I went way back – to 1968 when he was for a time a stop-Nixon candidate for the GOP nomination. I had switched to Rockefeller after RFK was killed as the best hope for an anti-war liberal to win the White House. Of course, I was only 8 at the time and to this day I’m not sure whether Rocky was anti-war or not. In any event, I urged my dad to take me out to the Rockefeller rally at the Wichita Municipal Airport and there we stood, waving a pre-made sign, and surging forward in the crowd to shake his hand. “How ya’ doin’ young fella?” Rocky asked me, as he patted me on the head. So I was seething that night when Reagan delegates shouted down Nelson Rockefeller.

I spent much of the convention trying to sneak into areas I wasn’t supposed to be in. I got to sit right next to Ford’s kids on the final night, while I read my advance copy of the speeches which I had picked up in the press area. Anyway, the night Rocky was treated so poorly by all those nice Chreeest-yin folks, I exited through one of the restricted doors only to find Rocky himself sitting there outside the hall. He was by himself, a half bottle of Jose Cuervo sitting beside him, smoking a cigarette. He patted me on the head, motioned toward the bottle, and with a look of disbelief that a Rockefeller had been treated the way he had by Republicans(!), he grabbed the bottle away from me and told me to get the hell out of there. “Don’t walk, run. Don't look back. There’s nothing for you to see here.” I took him at his word. I got the hell out of there.

Not long after, Nelson Rockefeller was dead, and so was the liberal wing of the Republican party. I never looked back. I’ve never supported a Republican since. (OK, I wasn’t even a Republican back then, but if I had been, I would have never supported a Republican again.)