The polls remain pretty much neck and neck, and the nation was waiting to see what Mitt Romeny had to say to them in a widely anticipated acceptance speech.
And then Isaac, a tropical storm that has built into a force 1 hurricane hit.
The worry isn't that the storm would hit the Tampa-St. Petersburg area, but that it will rain devastation on other areas on the Gulf Coast, most likely on Mississippi and New Orleans just as the convention gets started in Tampa Bay.
Aside from the fact that a hurricane will almost certainly suck all the oxygen out of the news cycle and eclipse the GOP convention, ( and quite rightly), one has to consider the effect of the juxtaposition of a hurricane's devastation and people launching balloons and wearing funny hats in the Tampa Bay Convention Center.
Not only that, but you can count of the Obama Media to draw parallels between Isaac and the last big hurricane to hit the area Katrina. And of course, the Republican who was in the White House then.
President Obama could certainly be relied on to take advantage of this by making a high profile tour of the area, something he's rarely seen fit to do when it came to other disasters.
Ideally, one would hope both parties could set aside politics and work together at a time of disaster and work together in unison to overcome it.
That is probably too much to hope for, but for their part I hope the Republicans will at least consider postponing their convention until we see which way the wind blows..literally. A GOP oriented drive to aid hurricane victims if that's what it comes to wouldn't hurt either if they are shut out of participation in disaster relief by the White House.
But the convention needs to be postponed. It's not only the smart thing to do politically, it the right thing to do.
3 comments:
This is definitive proof that God is a woman.
i don't agree with ff, and this is why:
saints acting head coach joe vitt, on playing at tennesse thursday night:
Why did the club not make a decision to leave tomorrow?
“I’m always amazed at our organization’s skills in making the right decisions in these things. They’ve received expert opinions (weather prognostications) that this thing is not going to hit until Wednesday. We do have a contingency plan that we can evacuate tomorrow. Instead of going to Tennessee, we would go to Cincinnati. Those things have already been laid out. We wanted to give our players time to get their families out of town and to a safe place.”
the nfl is playing a full slate of games thursday night.
major league baseball is playing out their schedule.
no one else is canceling anything.
if the shoe were on the other foot the marxists would say screww new orleans, blame it on the repubs, and bring on the hookers.
in making his decision i would remind ff that the country does not care about unemployment, nor does it care about the national debt.
they want to watch their sporting events. ESPN has been running hussein segments regularly for weeks now.
i would also point out that while all these sporting activities are going on, the NFL has decided to move their opening night game so everyone can watch hussein give his inaugural address next thursday night.
no, that was not a typo.
this is a lose lose situation. the media will crucify romney regardless of what they do with the convention.
besides, bobby jindal can handle louisiana and nagin is gone from new orleans.
the media will be covering how excellently hussein is handling the aftermath from the thirteenth fairway.
let romney have his time.
hussein, he gonna save us all!!!!
I suppose the Republican party has to have a convention. It seems the Republicans have decied to go ahead with the convention, while delaying by a day the main parts of it. Whether the Repubicans chose to cancel the convention, postpone it, or have every thing on time, it really would not matter. This is a no win situation for them.
If it were cancelled, they would be accused of palying partisain politics. Had they chosen to do every thing as initially scheduled, they would be accused of being callous while people are suffering. If they handle things the way they did, they will be accused of being callous, playing partisian politics, or both but perhaps the criticism just might be as intense this way. All in all by postponing things for a day, they probably made the best decision they could given the situation.
While Issac is a major and likely very devestating storm, it is no where near comparable to either Hurricane Katrina or Hurricane Ike in terms of its strength. Furthermore, New Orleans is much better prepared for a hurricane than they were in 2005 when Katrina hit. In addition, the state and city have better leadership now than they did in 2005. In summary, this is a less powerful storm, the leadership is better, and the city NO is better prepared than they were for Hurricane Katrina.
While the Republicans are having hteir convention, Barack Obama and Democratic party leaders will get to hold photo ops in NO and elsewhere, while others do the brunt of the work in preparing for and dealing with the disaster. They and the media will compare and contrast their performance in this area with how former President Bush and his team handled Katrina.
In actuality there is no comparison. We are dealing with a less powerful storm, the state and local leadership is better now than it was then, and the city and state are better prepared. As such, we would expect a much smoother operation than what happened during Hurricane Katrina. Even though there is no comparison this will not stop Team Obama or his media supporters from trying to draw comparisions to Issac and Katrina. Nor am I optimistic that the public most of whom did not experience Katrina or Ike will be able to figure this out.
While the Republicans hold a convention where they will no doubt criticize Mr. Obama, Mr. Obama and key members of his team will get to hold photo ops touting his great leadership with regards to the response to Hurricane Issac. This critiscism will be played by the media while highlighting Mr. Obama's great "leadership" during Hurricane Issac.
I'm not saying don't criticize Mr. Obama. Any criticism should be strictly limited to the economy and how the Republicans plan to fix it. The Republicans might criticize team Obama on national security issues only IF they plan to do something to secure the borders and get our warriors out of Afghanistan and Iraq. Since they have no plan for that, its probably best for them to keep quiet here.
Essentially stay away from side issues such as where Mr. Obama was born, is he eligble to be POTUS, or he is a "Marxist." These issues only serve to distract and play right into Mr. Obama's hands thus helping his electoral chances. This is especially the case since his team and his media allies are going to be busily touting his "success" in responding to Issac.
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