Word: gop
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Obama's convention was largely an internal affair. In Minneapolis, John McCain faces a different dilemma. He must reach outside the Republican base and win over ornery independents as a different kind of Republican. Can the GOP put on a different kind of convention...
...GOP conclaves work like the docile old horse at the petting zoo. The old mare plods along a path it knows well, the kid is happy riding and the show ends right on schedule with no surprises. Sure, the wealthy pro-choice donors who fund the GOP occasionally break into an uneasy sweat when caught in an elevator crush with a few of the party's pro-life, pro-gun fuglemen, but in the end everybody has a good time, and we usually win the election...
...this namby-pamby stuff will turn off the rank and file. It is true that after years of maverick behavior, McCain will be in the ironic position of having many of his longtime political enemies staring back at him from the convention floor. The creative-destructive caucus in the GOP is small, however, and few crave victory at the cost of self-immolation. And the prospect of an Obama-Pelosi diktat in Washington is enough to make even the most McCain-hating Republican sprint breathlessly to the polls. Ultimately it is a question of simple arithmetic. In 2008, the GOP...
...about honor, battle and victory. His convention speech has a different purpose: it must welcome and then reassure. It must show in plain language not one party's road to victory but what a McCain presidency would mean to all Americans. This is not the sort of convention the GOP does naturally. But in this difficult year, the Republicans must gallop, not walk, along a different path...
Murphy is a GOP political consultant and was senior strategist for Senator John McCain's 2000 presidential race