RNC Dispatch: Women Of The Grand Old Party

St PAUL -- They're tough as boot leather, these Republican women come to the Twin Cities -- even the ones who wear Chanel flats and pearls. And they're hoppin' mad -- to use Texas delegation talk -- about what they see as attacks from the "left-wing" blogosphere and The New York Times (always the whipping post) on their Sarah. Whatever their private thoughts, these delegates and their male counterparts have rallied enthusiastically for Sarah Palin here in St. Paul. The talk is Palin, Palin, Palin and Palineana (walking the walk, living the life, cutting waste, rooting out corruption). John McCain is hardly mentioned, except in the context of his making a "great choice." Having followed these women all day, from a brunch at the Mall of America in Bloomington to a Cindy McCain/Laura Bush/Mother McCain service event at the Minneapolis Convention Center and then back to St. Paul for a pro-life cocktail hour with Phyllis Schlafly and Laura Ingraham at the Crowne Plaza Hotel (a center of the action this week), I've finally seen the women off on the buses for the Palindome. Footsore, I'm sitting down and incidentally trying to organize ragged thoughts before heading to Minneapolis again and the late-night Huckabee party (yes, he's playin').

Today has been Fun & Fashion at the Mall of America for the Republican Women. Likely I missed a few among the crush of events in Denver, but I don't recall a fashion show and Nordstrom's personal shopper for Democrats. The Mall is looking tired, so I'm still waiting for a classy venue at a McCain Campaign event. On an indoor terrace with fishing cabin architecture, overlooking the mall McDonald's and a kiddie playground, Republican delegates sip Mimosas and wonder among themselves how Sarah Palin will manage the baby, a new grandchild and John McCain, too. Whenever I approach, the women scatter like a flock of starlings. Wary of the press, they turn tight-lipped in the presence of a stranger from The Huffington Post. Behind me, the conversation picks up again. How is she going to do it all?

The women of the Guam delegation, including the wife of the Governor, take me in, and so serendipitously at last I satisfy my curiosity about Barack Obama's one-delegate victory over Hillary Clinton in the Guam Democratic caucus. Yes, the delegates say, Hillary Clinton should've won, because both her husband and she had visited Guam during the Clinton years. But Obama had opened an office in Guam, with a paid staffer -- very impressive on a poor island. One morning Obama called into a popular radio talk show -- the rest was history -- except that, according to these Republican women, many of those caucusing thought that they were voting for President of the United States.

Two hours later I'm watching a paler and older Laura Bush as well as much of the McCain clan fill orange plastic boxes with jars of Vaseline, yellow flashlights, batteries, tiny bars of soap and washcloths. Some things never change. I remember putting those same tiny soaps in Red Cross cardboard boxes headed for Japan in the early 1950s. The box assembly line is part of a tribute to PEPFAR (President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) and the President's Malaria Initiative. We watch a film about the near-eradication of malaria in Rwanda. An administrator for One.org, one of the three charities that have organized this event, tells me that in fact she has no idea where the orange plastic boxes will go -- perhaps not even Africa. The boxes will be shipped either to Denver or Pittsburgh, One's two distribution centers, and wait on a pallet until the pallet is full. Nevertheless, Laura Bush and the McCain clan work quickly, moving orange boxes down the rows of stacked goods under the scrutiny of a phalanx of cameras.

Janet Huckabee pushes forward to take photos despite shouts from the press photographers for her to move. The small crowd of Republican spectators slowly steps into the assembly line. Cindy McCain appears relaxed in jeans and a black One.org tee shirt. Mother McCain fills her orange boxes while carrying an embroidered handbag (I haven't seen one in years). She steps over to the enormous circle of pennies laid out on the carpeted ballroom floor (the work of Give Help) and empties her purse. Soon other women -- the few with purses -- are following her example. I push past these displays of generosity for it's time to return to St. Paul. It's raining now, and the afternoon has grown cooler. With amazement, I notice that more than a few of the women have found time in this busy day to change into cashmere sweaters. "To whom much is given, much is required," Laura Bush has just said. For many Republican women, this dictum has always included the requirement to look just about perfect no matter the circumstance.

The Life of the Party party, hosted by the Republican National Coalition for Life, has packed the mezzanine ballroom of the Crowne Plaza Hotel. The Crowne Plaza is home to the Texas delegation, some of whom, in their red Republican polo shirts, jeans, tooled leather and silver belts and cowboy hats are already a familiar sight around St. Paul. Indeed "red" is the color de rigueur for the Life party. Hats, cell phones, sequined jackets, studded jackets, charmeuse silk blouses, flag sweaters, flag cowboy shirts, flag leather purses, little dresses, elephant ties, patent leather heels, Chanel patent leather heels, the ruby eyes on elephant pins -- all red. The large room pulses red, for most everybody is wearing a blinking Life of the Party heart pin.

Governor Palin is listed as the guest speaker, and many attendees have been hoping that she might appear, despite the official word from Phyllis Schlafly that Palin is busy working on her speech for Wednesday night. Resplendent in her own bling bling blinking elephant pin, Schlafly announces "an exciting celebrity" in Palin's place when suddenly a Code Pink protester materializes on stage holding a hand-written sign, "Pro-Life. Stop War." As the woman is hauled off, Schlafly says, "Protesters! We survived!" People chuckle, pleased with the minor scuffle that has validated their importance to themselves. Now another Code Pinker appears next to Schlafly, and this time the crowd is not amused. The entire room launches into "God Bless America." Five hundred guests have begun singing at the same moment, on the same note -- does this kind of disturbance happen so often that they are always in sync?

The celebrity guest is Laura Ingraham, looking frazzled and unkempt as someone called in at the last minute just might; nevertheless, with gusto she begins to feed the crowd, ripping into the media while praising St. Palin. Sarah Palin represents "a new feminism," Ingraham says, "powerful, dignified, graceful, loving, compassionate, of good cheer, optimistic." But the liberal elites and the media -- "pretty much everyone at MSNBC" -- are "treating her [Palin] like dirt." Of course, "they have all these stamps on their passports because they're so much smarter than we are." Ingraham would seem not to know her audience all that well, for many of them have lots of stamps on their passports -- and not just the women in Chanel. The members of mainstream not to mention evangelical American churches increasingly take part in mission trips abroad, so likely more than a few of the pro-lifers in the Crowne Plaza ballroom have passport stamps for Rwanda and Ukraine, two popular mission destinations.

The people in the media, and "on those blogs out there," Ingraham says, measure "experience" in terms of picking up the phone to reach somebody important, in terms of restaurants in Manhattan and "cool resorts and spas," "the cool restaurant in St. Paul." The woman has a restaurant obsession, and doesn't she know that one can spend an entire week at a convention and never lack for food -- that it's all free -- so that nobody ever has to enter a restaurant? Some in the crowd may be wondering here, but for the most part they are clapping and cheering. "It's gonna be one big shootin' match this week!" Ingraham says. The media and the elites "don't like the fact that Sarah Palin exists." Even making allowances for overstatement as a staple of the party scene, this is a bit much. The media craves Sarah Palin -- she feeds the news cycle. And nobody is more of an elite or a Palin lover than Fred Thompson, who within the hour will assert that nobody in either party but Sarah Palin "knows how to field dress a moose." Nevertheless, a big part of the day's talk has been about the treatment of Sarah Palin, and some Republicans are feeling aggrieved.

Mostly, however, the Crowne Plaza Republicans are ready to party. They have two days of lost time to make up. The crowd, many of them surprisingly young, surges from the ballroom, past Abraham Lincoln (a delegate who looks like Abe and therefore wears period dress), past a Friar Tuck, a rope-belted, Birkenstock-clad, Terri (Schiavo) pin-wearing honest-to-goodness real man-of-the-cloth who has come out to support this group of pro-lifers. "Don't leave!" volunteers cry. "There's still plenty of food!" The escalators are filling. "We have a lot more parties to get to," delegates explain. Not too many are heading on to the convention floor tonight. Women in cowboy hats and red shirts mill about the lobby. The convention buses are pulling up out front. As I sit for a minute to take in the scene, a Texas blogger comes up for a chat and to confide that the McCain Campaign's internal polling is showing Obama with a two-point lead. Hoping to hitch a ride on the Texas bus, I follow a few of the women with whom I've been talking to the street. Immediately, we're swept into a bit of street theater with the Missile Dick Chicks, closely tended by bicycle-riding policewomen, who keep their distance from the Chicks' waving silver penises. The Texas women aren't too impressed, although they take a lot of pictures. "You don't sound like Texas to me," one says. "Or even the South." And at last that's one thing on which the Republican women and I agree.

Comments

[BobinKS]

The media likes Bozo the Clown when he's the new kid in the room. Thank god the press is vetting her-McCain didn't.

[Melissa]

The media coverage is already starting to backfire. They will be responsible for Obama losing. The women on CNN are in such a dither it is really fun to watch.