Current Repug Pols Conspicuous By Their Absence At RNC

Chad Rubel at BuzzFlash: Eye On The Races:

Many missing elements from the GOP last night, including current Republican politicians

I watched an Oscar-winning performance last night. No, not Heath Ledger in "The Dark Knight" but Fred Thompson as Fred Thompson in "Rally around the Old Guy."

When Thompson was running for president, he was Fred Thompson, politician. Last night, he was Fred Thompson, actor. Despite his extensive catalog of movies and TV, Thompson tends to play similar characters: conservative, Southern, stodgy. It could be said that is because Thompson has limited range, but no no, Thompson is so convincing as a right-wing prick that he gets typecast.

And last night, the GOP needed Thompson, the actor, to step up.

After all, the Republicans need to sell the John McCain that may have existed back in 2000 and pretend this is the same McCain in 2008. This requires great acting chops. Thompson gave the best speech of the night, and it still wasn't that great. The speech was the highlight of the night, and that wasn't saying much.

They haven't got much to sell, and not much to try to sell it with.

And the other thing missing were actual politicians: the number of current Republican politicians that I saw last night were Bush and Norm Coleman. And Bush wasn't even in St. Paul. You had the feeling that Coleman had to be there, being the former mayor of St. Paul, and representing the state where the convention is. But Coleman is in a grand fight with Al Franken for his Senate seat, and likely didn't want to be anywhere near the convention.

To put it in a slightly different way, no Repug who wants to be re-elected came anywhere near the joint. Heh.

There's stuff about Lieberman's speech and Bush's phoned-in drivel, and more as well.

There was one deal I saw that I think typifies Repugs' outlook. A TV interviewer, I can't remember which one, was talking to some prig of a delegate who said approximately the following:

"I'm sore that our convention was cancelled to placate the liberal media because some people were getting rained on."

I think that sums up the R's 'hooray for me and fuck you' attitude pretty well.

Update:

The interview referred to above was on The Daily Show in a segment likening the XCel Center to the Superdome during Katrina. From Raw Story, with the video:

One Republican delegate lamented to Jason Jones, "I was real excited until we decided to cancel the convention to placate the liberal media. ... I don't understand why it is that all of a sudden you can't tell the truth about Barack Obama because some people are getting rained on."