RNC Hosting 2028 Convention In Houston—First Non-Battleground State In Decadeshttps://t.co/5uQk3pt9cp pic.twitter.com/L2zWRt7tME
— Forbes (@Forbes) August 25, 2023
… Assuming, by that point in time, that the Republican National Convention needs a venue larger than an Idaho community center. And that Houston hasn’t been abandoned due to the Republicans’ inability to keep the power grid working reliably. Or, even worse by RNC standards, flipped to the sane party — us Democrats!
Per the Texas Tribune:
… The RNC’s 168 members voted to choose Houston on Friday morning in Milwaukee, the site of next year’s convention and the first Republican primary debate earlier this week. The announcement came uncommonly early — five years before the convention and a year before the 2024 convention.
McDaniel brought up the party’s efforts to reach out to Hispanic voters in the selection of a city in Texas, where conservative Hispanic candidates have progressed in long-time Democratic strongholds in South Texas.
“We all know that Hispanic voters have been shifting toward the Republican Party. Texans like Monica De La Cruz and Tony Gonzales and Ted Cruz and Mayra Flores have been front and center leading that charge in 2022,” McDaniel said…
Oh, so now Rafael Ted’s Hispanic?
Politico explains:
… Outgoing Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, a Democrat who is term-limited and cannot seek reelection, said the city is “proud” to be chosen as the site of the RNC’s 2028 gathering. He described Houston as “the nation’s most diverse and inclusive city,” one that “represents the future of the United States and our aspirations as a country.”
“This keeps us on the global stage, allowing us to showcase our amazing venues and the people who keep our hotels, restaurants, and local businesses operating,” Turner said in a statement.
While Texas remains a red state, shifting demographics and narrowing GOP margins in recent years have given Democrats a degree of hope in the state…
RNC members in April 2022 approved a rule change to allow the committee to begin selecting convention cities as far as six years out, after beginning the process of planning its 2024 gathering and realizing some cities’ hotels and convention centers were already booked up nearly three years in advance. Anne Hathaway, chair of the RNC’s convention site selection committee and the national committee member from Indiana, told POLITICO at the time that since major sporting events are being reserved years in advance, as well as large conventions like the National Rifle Association’s annual conference, the GOP needed to begin its city-scouting process earlier to have more options.
Democrats have not made a similar change to their convention planning timeline.
The RNC’s 2024 convention in Milwaukee will be held July 15 to 18.
As a loyal American Democrat, I can only hope the RNC’s next five years are consumed by an ongoing embarrassment of bad news, interparty conflicts, and general shenanigans (at which leading GOP Texas pols like Gregg ‘Greet the Migrant Babies with Razor Wire’ Abbott’ and Ken ‘Who, Me — Under Investigation *Again*?‘ Paxton are so preternaturaly gifted).
The dissension has started already…
The Texas Republican Party bans Logcabin, the gay conservative group with 80 chapters across the US.
Texas is the only state that bans us from their state convention.
The national GOP Convention shouldn’t be in Texas if this ban remains.@GOPChairwoman @tedcruz @JohnCornyn https://t.co/1MJ5jLHKte
— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) August 25, 2023
Those replies to that are bleak. Just a bunch of center right people asking "why did the leopards eat your face" and a bunch more leopards saying "it's good they ate your face and i will help them eat more faces"
— Sysfin (@SysFin) August 26, 2023
The Daughter of Time (with Subaru Dianne)
John Revolta
Oh, so now
RafaelTed’s Hispanic?Hilarious!
…….I wonder if they’ve told him yet?
Parfigliano
Who wants to go to Houston in the summer?
eclare
So they have a location, I wonder if they’ll bother with a platform in Houston. Besides we hate teh gays.
karen marie
Thank you, Anne Laurie, a late-night laugh is always welcome!
HumboldtBlue
The Texas Tribune is in financial trouble.
I found out today Amazon has an outlet store that sells items at reduced prices.
The movie Airplane is a whole-ass remake of the 1957 movie thriller, Zero Hour!
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@HumboldtBlue:
Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.
Villago Delenda Est
Grenell and the Log Cabin Rethuglicans are total idiots. Of course they hate you, mofos. You’re gay. To them, you’re an abomination.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
He’s one cool cat
Jeffg166
Read someone’s comment that the Republican Party will be so small by 2028 you could drown it in a bathtub.
Pete Downunder
It’s early evening Monday here in the land down under. I am eagerly awaiting word of the two hearings – the remand evidentiary hearing in the USDC in GA for Meadows removal matter and the trial setting in the USDC in DC for the Jan 6 case. I hope some East Coast jackels will report on these as I will still be asleep when they take place.
Will Meadows testify under oath that he committed the felony breach of the Hatch Act (his lawyer’s argument in his opposition to the motion to remand, and what will Her Honor do to Trump for the many violations of his conditions of release. It should be an exciting morning.
Waiting with bated breath down under.
Mai Naem mobileI
I am sure climate change will lead to even better temps by 2028. Houston is supposed to be one of the most diverse cities in the country. Wonder if the GOP realizes that? I am kind of surprised they’re not doing one of the Carolinas, especially NC.
Viva BrisVegas
Does Houston have enough
bordelloschurches to cater for the Republican crowd?Jeffg166
@Viva BrisVegas: I am sure the male and female hookers have already booked their room for 2028.
Anne Laurie
Too many Democrats, many of them not even WHITE!!!
bookworm1398
Mayor Turner had tried to get the DNC convention to come to Houston earlier but they were hesitant due to the City vs firefighters pension dispute. It’ll be interesting to see how RNC does
waspuppet
@Pete Downunder: Meadows is caught in a trap of his own making here, which is what happens when you plead “F you” instead of not guilty.
Well, that’s what the venues told them when they realized the Republicans were on the phone, anyway.
I rest my case.
The Oracle of Solace
Gay conservatives are shocked, shocked! about the GOP eating their faces. This is what happens when one prioritizes one’s bank account over one’s civil rights, I suppose.
Perhaps, by holding its convention in Texas, the GOP is retreating to its safe space. Either that, or they’re truly spooked about Texas going purple—I haven’t forgotten the remark by Paxton (?) that without vote suppression measures in 2020, Texas would have gone for Biden. I didn’t think he really believed that, but maybe he did…
LiminalOwl
Still an open thread? Here’s a politics-adjacent news item that made me happy yesterday (gift link, no paywall): Four-year-old requests (and gets) SCOTUS-female-justice themed birthday party.
eversor
@The Oracle of Solace:
I’ve met gay conservatives that support the GOP because it supports Christianity and traditional gender roles/is anti abortion. Which, when hearing that I got cluster headaches.
Frankensteinbeck
While I appreciate Turner’s style here, the RNC is legendarily a shitty convention of hostile, abusive assholes who make the locals miserable and are so miserly they only give a big increase in business to one industry. Houston will not enjoy hosting this.
By contrast, furry conventions are loved by the locals everywhere they’re held as polite, friendly, high-tipping, free-spending goofballs.
@Jeffg166:
Close, but as I recall it’s only the gay male hookers who get a wild upswing in business while the RNC is in town.
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck:
It’s not fair to religiously oppose something that you haven’t even tried out.
Ramalama
As a teh gay myself I have met my share of Log Cabin Repubs, and I used to think wtf.
All of the Loggers I’d met were men, though I’m sure there were women whose crowds I ran in too.
It kind of made sense back when- when both parties were chicken shit with bias. Oh my yes.
But now I think back to some of my roommates – gay men – who were conservatives who were driven out of their families (one by a gun his father carried as a sheriff) for being gay, I think also of the farmer whose family banished him, only to rely on his financial prowess / his artful methodical planning ways to keep the farm not only afloat but thriving…of course that’s what they know. That was their family. Their families dictated shitty terms to keep arms’ distances from these kids, these men. It takes something to shake them up to undo all the years of abuse.
Other times I just say fuck these people, but right now, I am seeing through those particular cracks.
I got very lucky in the family lottery.
satby
@Ramalama: That’s a heartbreaking analysis. Glad you didn’t suffer that too.
Matt McIrvin
@Anne Laurie:
But that’s true in Houston, too.
SiubhanDuinne
@LiminalOwl:
That was a delightful way to start the day! Charming and reassuring.
SiubhanDuinne
@HumboldtBlue:
Great links, thanks!
raven
@HumboldtBlue: Airplane is also patterned after The High and Mighty with John Wayne as Whistlin’ Dan Roman. There is a scene in it where a love triangle results in a guy pulling a gun ! The passengers wrestle it away from him and one says “we’ll give it back to you when we land”!
Consequently it was also the name of our softball team!
eta
Great quote from the film
”
Alsop: She may be put together with paste and flour, but that woman has something. What would you say it was?
Miss Spalding: Practice. Plenty of practice.
Geminid
@eversor: A few years ago a friend told me about a group of Trump-supporting lesbians she ran into while visiting a friend near Wallop’s Island, over on the Eastern Shore. Joan’s an ardent, true-blue Democrat who’s been a proud and out lesbian for 50 years, but she did not seem very shocked. Joan is very sociable, travels a lot, and has met hundreds of other lesbians up and down the East Coast. She knows its a diverse community and not every member will conform to expectations of what their politics should be
Joan’s also fairly outspoken, and she probably argued with them some but maybe not too hard.
Albatrossity
It’s not clear to me that a bunch of GQP crazies holding a convention in your state is a good way to “woo” voters. But there are several definitions of woo, I suppose.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Jeffg166:
I remember thinking that in 2008.
OverTwistWillie
Dukakis in Atlanta vibes. Site selection as an invocation against alignment shifts don’t work.
lee
I live in Texas. The entire week of the convention I’m going to have every single electric appliance on at full blast. If I my little bit can help bring down the grid while those fuckers are here, I’m more than happy to help.
Matt McIrvin
@OverTwistWillie: Though that made me immediately think that Atlanta would be a fine place for the DNC now. But it apparently lost the 2024 bidding to Chicago, which is also the “safe space” pattern.
Geminid
I read a story yesterday that authorities asked Texans to limit electrical consumption that evening. The news item said that its electrical consumption had reached similar peaks 8 times already this summer. It sounds like their infrastructure is keeping up, but just barely.
One problem yesterday was that the air was fairly calm in west Texas where most of the wind generators are. Energy storage systems like batteries are becoming more economical, so that is a soluble problem. Still, I think Texas will eventually have to make more substantial connections to out-of-state electrical grids.
Soprano2
@eversor: That would give me a headache.
lee
@Geminid:
They have been asking that off-and-on for the past week. I think commercial customers get a break if they do reduce power but residential do not.
patrick II
That is why Houston, Texas was chosen.
Another Scott
I keep forgetting that “Logcabin” (I guess that’s their new branding? Like they recognize “Republican” is too toxic even for them now??) even exists. Until the GQP leadership craps on them every few years and they get their 15 seconds of fame again.
Like Kissinger, I guess they’ll always be with us. In this case, to serve their role in the “both sides” storyline.
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Mike in NC
Once spent three freakin’ weeks at what was then Fort Hood in July and August. Yuck!
cain
@Geminid: A lot of white gay people are racists – we’ve already seen that many will vote against their interest because they want to hurt the other.
Paul Begala's Pink Tie
@Villago Delenda Est: this is also what puzzles me when I listen to any of the Bulwark people analyzing the GOP primary. They extol Nikki Haley’s debate performance & muse about Tim Scott’s electability, which one the donors will choose, etc. Like they haven’t noticed that Tim & Nikki are *clang* and base voters would just stay home. Log Cabin guys (and I do think they’re men) are similarly delusional — the party explicitly does not want you, so why are you bothering to protest?
Paul Begala's Pink Tie
@Geminid: yep, we are being asked not to run major appliances during the day.
Anyway
@cain:
I know gay guys that were Ron Paul supporters – they might have drifted into Vermont Jebus territory.
Paul in KY
@Another Scott: I’m bad, so I always wonder about ‘log’ being in there…
Diceros bicornis
@HumboldtBlue:
HOW DID I NEVER SEE THIS BEFORE NOW
Thanks for a most excellent share, there