Written by: Anonymous

Do you remember the Pace Picante Sauce commercials where the cowboys would be sitting around the campfire eating their dinner and would start complaining about the picante? After one cowboy discovers that Cook has fed them picante sauce bottled in New York, they would all shout out in shock and disbelief - "New York City?!!".

Well if you do remember those commercials, that's sort of how I felt when I first learned that the RNC planned to have its convention in NYC.

Now don't get me wrong. I LOVE New York City. Some of my best memories are from the city. I also understand the tremendous symbolic value of staging the RNC in the city that suffered the most from the terror attacks.

On the other hand, I don't think conventions should be risky affairs. By holding the convention in New York City, the GOP has:

a) picked the city with the largest home grown base of violent protesters
b) picked a city located in the middle of the largest regional concentration of Bush haters (in close competition with the Left Coast)
c) picked a city whose compact nature makes it difficult to cordon off the convention and its related activities from the remainder of the city

It seems like the GOP is begging for a large scale violent confrontation. Not that that would necessarily be a bad thing politically. It might be good for the American people to be reminded of the violence, hatred, and anti-Americanism of those who hate Bush the most. This might be especially true when it would be the anti-Bush protesters versus the admired NYPD. But I still don't think the GOP should pick a location that almost assures large scale violence, especially if it means some of those NYPD officers are going to get hurt also.

Now some might say that the GOP shouldn't let themselves be cowed by the violence of the protesters. There is definitely a good deal of truth in that. But as I said earlier, conventions shouldn't be risky affairs, and by having the convention in New York, the GOP has assured that the success of the convention will be partially determined by events outside of their control. It has also picked a location where the general populace just won't be that welcoming. That doesn't seem smart, regardless of the principles involved.

Hopefully it will turn out for the best, but as far as I am concerned, it would have made a lot more sense to play it safe and have the convention in Ohio or Florida.