Someone should tell some of the GOP convention attendees that you’re supposed to act like a drunk idiot after hours at the bar, not on the convention floor. There was a procedural skirmish between the Ron Paul and Mitt Romney supporters over whose delegates would be seated. The party decided that no Maine delegates would be seated, even though many floor delegates thought the motion should be considered (guess it sucks to be a Maine Republican). Much grumpiness ensued. Then it got ugly when Zoraida Fonalledas, of Puerto Rico, chairwoman of the Committee of Permanent Organization, began to speak (boldface mine):
As she began speaking in her accented English, some in the crowd started shouting “USA! USA!”
The chanting carried on for nearly a minute while most of the other delegates and the media stood by in stunned silence. The Puerto Rican correspondent turned to me and asked, “Is this happening?” I said I honestly didn’t know what was happening—it was astonishing to see all the brittle work of narrative construction that is a modern political convention suddenly crack before our eyes. None of us could quite believe what we were seeing: A sea of twentysomething bowties and cowboy hats morphing into frat bros apparently shrieking over (or at) a Latina. RNC chairman Reince Priebus quickly stepped up and asked for order and respect for the speaker, suggesting that, yeah, what we had just seen might well have been an ugly outburst of nativism.
I’m guessing this won’t help in Florida, New Mexico, or Arizona. As awful as the Democrats can be, this is dreadful. Definitely not ‘post-racial.’
While this is shocking in its stupidity, the ugliness should not be surprising. Once again, Republicans think they can ride this tiger.
Update: Two attendees were removed from the convention last night for throwing nuts at a black CNN cameraman, while saying, “This is how we feed animals.” BUT THEY’RE NOT RACIST! Or something.
mikethemadbiologist
As the thugs feel more powerful and more supported, the veneer of decency is tossed away. How can people who supposedly pay attention to politics not have realized that this is the modern GOP? I saw this coming on twenty years ago; that’s why I got out of a party that even then was too vicious, irrational and slimily, piously hypocritical to stomach. They’ve only gotten worse and more open about it since then, and for some reason, it’s only the reaction to it that gets condemned as “hateful”, “partisan” and “uncivil”. Political/”Religious” threats, even assaults, are now widely considered normal and acceptable, but only as long as they are directed at “The Left”. Nobody reads William Shirer any more? This is how it works – we’ve seen all this before, more than once. When good people aren’t willing to stand up to it, the plague of rats will gnaw the house down. Our house is in terrible shape, and it’s not the “Liberals” who have been tearing it down.
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I watched snippets last night and came away bored with the trite crap and the “We did build it!” bullshit. I didn’t hear about this stuff until this morning. Sleep with dogs, wake up with fleas.
On the positive side, it was only two people, and they were not being cheered by the entire audience.
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Ann Romney Wants Hispanic Voters To Get Past ‘Their Biases’
hard to understand how Hispanics could have come to have biases against the GOP…
i haven’t watched any of the videos, nor am i going to, but maybe the usa!usa!usa! chants weren’t directed at the hispanic speaker, they may have been directed at the ron paul supporters instead:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/ron-paul-delegates-we-were-robbed.html
Possibly. It would only make me feel slightly better though, since now “USA,USA,USA” would apparently now be the RNC’s “Chewbacca Defense,” only even less intelligent.