During the Democratic National Convention, there was not a day of coverage that did not include breathless speculation on how fractured the Democratic Party and how at any time either Hillary Clinton or both of the Clintons would institute some sort of coup de grace and undermine Barack Obama. Chris Matthews, in particular, compulsively spewed as if he had his own Clinton-centered version of Tourette's.
But not one mention that there is a whole other Republican rally going on right now. The one for the true Republican Party fracture candidate, Ron Paul. Why, media, why? The portion I watched on Tuesday had such names as Tucker Carlson, Bruce Fein and Grover Norquist speaking. And let's be honest, it looked far more lively at the Ron Paul rally than it did at the half-full and dispirited Xcel Energy Center:
Almost 9,800 tickets had been sold for the Rally for the Republic, being held in Minneapolis, which seeks to bring together activists who are anti-war, anti-government regulation, anti-immigration, anti-taxes, anti-Federal Reserve, anti-outsourcing, pro-individual liberty, pro-civil liberties and pro-Paul.[..]
Paul, a Texas congressman who failed in a bid for the Republican presidential nomination, considers the rally a celebration of traditional Republican values of limited government - and a poke in the eye of the GOP. They don't plan to crash the Republican party, but to show they and their Campaign for Liberty are not going away.
"No matter how much our message is ignored or ridiculed, as was done in the campaign, no matter how much they did to us, it only energized our grass roots," Paul said.
The rally builds on Paul's presidential bid, in which he set a record for single-day fundraising on the Web and touched a nerve with some disaffected voters, largely in the Republican Party.[..]
But Paul has no speaking role at the GOP convention. He said his staff made overtures to the party, but nothing came of its efforts.
