I agree with your sentiment completely.

We're on the list down here in Portland, too. Locals are flabbergasted, and trying to remember where they stowed their gas masks from the last really big protest (a Bush fundraiser in 2002).

Let's not forget just how much orange barrier plastic the GOP owns. I didn't think it was possible, but they managed to rope off manhattan in 2004. We'd be penned.

This would be an opportunity for Seattle to allow itself some real diversity. As John Carlson once said, "It's easy to be a Republican on the Eastside. It's hard to be one in Seattle."
Besides, if we're going to get suckered into paying for more sports stuff - the Sonics' nonsense - we might as well allow the Republican party to bring its money here. Not all Republicans are rich; but the ones coming to this convention, will likely be bringing more than enough with them - if only via credit cards - to help fill the tip jars of more than a few barristas, bartenders and servers, around the Puget Sound.
As the man said, "Bring it on!"

i agree with letting them spend their money here, but why the HELL would they want to come to seattle, of all places?

Hey, when you're a Republican, it's hard to find a city in America whose population would tilt even close to your politics. And the suburbs don't seem to have developed sufficiently enormous, publicly subsized corporate boondoggle convention centers to house them yet. And anyway, where would the Republican delegates find all their prostitutes and drugs if they had their convention in the heartland? They need places like Seattle way more than we need them.

Boo hoo. It's so hard to be a Republican in an urban environment!

Maybe if your party didn't attack the rights of minorities, immigrants, women, gays, and blacks at every turn it would be easier to get by in large, diverse places. But take heart, Terry. You'll always have South Dakota—in a few more years, you'll have it all to yourself.

Ah, the wonders of the internet...I'm in Philly and we had the GOP convention here a couple of years ago. It was remarkably uneventful. The protests were pretty low key and nothing really significant happened at all. If you get it out there, I hope you make more noise!

My own hospitality business sources--cab drivers, hotel staffers, and sex workers--tend to despise Republican tourist packs as loudly obnoxious and unpleasable customers who think that tipping 10% is way way too much sharing of their personal wealth.

... nothing really eventful happened in Philly 2000 except for the preemptive arrest of activists before they had done ANYTHING, including holding David Solnit on $1 million bail to keep him off the streets. And that was before September 11, before the creation of officially designated protest areas (in Boston 2004) ringed with barbed wire miles from the actual event. These events are almost as bad as hosting the Olympics.

i miss w.t.o.

this would be close.

From a pragmatic point of view I would persume that TV pictures of broken windows and tear gas clouds at their convention is something the Reps could well profit from. Galvanizes the base, and could scare centrist voters into the arms of the GOP. So if one wants the Dems to win (which of, course not every Bush-hater neccessarily has to) it maybe would be advisable to keep the gas masks in the drawer and to hope for an uneventful convention, wherever it takes place.

WTO 2: Riot Harder

Yeah, I tend to agree with PBLOEMKE. As much fun as it would be to disrupt the convention I'm sure the R's would use that as "liberal activists failing to show compassion for anything outside their veiws."

At the same time, lobbing a water-baloon filled with piss would be pretty fun.

I would relish the opportunity to throw eggs at republican limosines, but it ain't gonna happen. This is solid democrat territory, and everyone remembers the last time we had a big event here.

Republican vampires like to use the sites of recent tragedies as a backdrop to show their compassion. My money is on New Orleans as the site of the next convention.

New Orleans????

Sure, New Orleans is the perfect place. Remember how the Republicans went straight to New York last time? They were able to use the location of Bush's greatest failure- the attack on the World Trade Center- and turn it into a scene of triumph. Never mind the loss of life, the collapse of our intelligence system, and the removal of millions of dollars from N.Y.'s fire and police budgets. It gave the Bushies the chance to re-frame the argument: "We care about New York. We're all New Yorkers now!"

New Orleans is the same deal. It will give the Republicans a chance to show some pretty houses in the garden district, trot out some smiling black faces, and demonstrate how well their policies have worked. You just watch.

I attended the 2000 Republican Convention (as a reporter, not a delegate) and if it's any indication, there will be no "cute college republicans" in attendance. It's a freak show of fat cat businessmen and the carny folks who love 'em.

There would be a barbed-wire perimeter around Key Arena, and protesters wouldn't be allowed within a mile of the delegates. My guess: San Diego. And if not there, then Phoenix or Houston or Atlanta.

Terry Parkhurst: New York city paid a bundle to deal with the GOP convention and there was universal agreemnet in the aftermath that there wasn't a cooresponding upsurge in earnings by businesses who host tourists near enough to justify hosting the convention on economic grounds. Much of the tourism business was actually economically harmed by the republican presence.

Did I ever say that I was a Republican? I quoted John Carlson. That's not the same thing. Besides, I thought you yourself were a Republican, Dan? Maybe if your paper really cared about the average working person, you'd allow a reporter to do an article on third-party billing of utilities. That's an issue that impacts many renters - 20 percent of them, by Seattle Public Utilities estimate. It would sure beat name-calling.
For the record, there are indeed pro-choice Republicans and those who support gay marriage. Many real Republicans have become Libertarians, because they don't want to support the bigotry you rightly take issue with.
They just don't get the press (and other media) coverage that the right wing of the party does. In any event, the GOP convention is academic now. But third party billing isn't.