All Hail the Republicans!

Now, before I start getting hate mail and death threats, let me assure you that I am a life-long, bleeding-heart, death-to-neo-conservative-establishment Democrat (even though they been pissing me off over the last few years). But right now I am making nice, smiling, and being as friendly as possible to any fool hanging around Cleveland representing the Republicans or the RNC. See, yesterday and today the RNC is here poking around trying to decide if they want to hold the RNC Convention here.

God willing--they will. It seems to me the conservatives are on the defense. If they know what's good for them they might want to ponder on this city a little longer. The dismal economic conditions of the state of Ohio are abound and this is the perfect time to make nice with a "swing state" that needs some love. The election debacle was just the icing on the cake. We are the state with worse growth rate--housing, employment, etc and Cuyahoga County had the 4th lowest number of new housing starts in the nation (but as we are pretty developed--not sure that means much) AND, recently the paper has been mentioning the exponential increase (from 1% to like 4.5% curious) in the number of Republicans in the state checking out Ted Strickland, the Democratic candidate for governor.

Might be good for the ole' Republican image machine to have the convention in a city that is making a completely bi-partisan effort to "Rock the RNC".

They could go to Tampa. But going there is possibly a shaky proposition--might be seen as more cronyism.

They could go to NYC. But they just had it there and even though that city has a Republican mayor(who thinks like a democrat with an MBA), last time around they were met with a 25,000 people protest. The possibility that the number of protestors will increase is a pretty good one.

They could go to Minneapolis. The city that Cleveland looks to for inspiration for growth. Its nice there-- in the summer; and they have a nice-sized Filipino enclave going on which allows the RNC to check off "diversity" on the bottom of the checklist.

To me, its between Minneapolis and Cleveland. Minneapolis-the turn around is apparent and its a cute mid-western mid-major city. But it might be preaching to the choir and not attracting the votes of folk who are on the fence about defecting. Cleveland is a swinger its an 80% democrat, 70% black city in a wholly red state that might say bye-bye to Red. After that travesty in New Orleans they might want to make it look like Kanye was wrong (to a point he was they don't like poor folk in general).

Lord knows Cleveland needs it( and Ohio too!), especially as it tries to not become Buffalo. Cleveland is underprivileged as was Philadelphia before the 2000 Convention. That convention helped Philly get in the spot light and get it back on the economic right track. But Cleveland especially needs it for Cleveland--some of this city's biggest detractors.