Day Two: What a gas

Christian Schneider
Commentary

As the bus carrying Wisconsin's delegates to the national GOP convention pulls up to the Xcel Center in St. Paul, the Fox News tent rises above all else. As soon as convention goers get off the bus, they have the opportunity to duck into the massive tent to get the full Fox News experience. Presumably, they can play "Be Greta Van Susteren for a day" to see who can spend the most time screeching about missing blonde co-eds. Or, to your left is the Dick Morris Experience, where contestants have to hire as many hookers as they can in 60 seconds. Some Wisconsin delegates actually walked out with -- and this is not a joke -- Hannity and Colmes hand sanitizer.

As you make your way to the Xcel Center, delegates must dodge a maze of large, black iron barricades and a sea of security checkpoints. Someone remarked that the convoluted path the convention sends you through seemed more like a behavioral experiment than an actual attempt at security.

Inside the convention hall, it is a maze of confusion, especially in the press area. Everyone is walking quickly and talking in hurried breath on cell phones, presumably in the middle of the most important call of their lives. Young staffers are leading their bosses around by the arm, making sure not a second is wasted in doing as many interviews as possible. Michael Barone walks by me on the left, Joe Klein on the right. Over in radio row, where talk radio hosts are jammed into 3-foot-by-3-foot stables, conservative talkers from all over the country are intensely delivering their convention diatribes to the folks back home.

Just as Wisconsin's delegates settled into their spots on the convention floor at 5 p.m. it was time to head over to a reception sponsored by the Minnesota Wild hockey team. Of course, the Wild are owned by Wisconsin delegate Craig Leipold. The event was held at 317 on Rice, a tony hotel adjacent to the Xcel Center. The old-style hotel, with its high ceilings and dark cherry wood aesthetic, hosted both the Wisconsin delegation and a party for the NFL owners sponsored by the Minnesota Vikings -- which, really should have been on a house boat, if you think about it. I was wondering if my $125 bid to buy the Toronto Argonauts qualified me to pay the owners a visit.

The Wisconsin delegates spent around two hours at the Wild party (unfortunately, the ethos of the party didn't match its name.) Conventioneers, resplendent in their various access passes, chatted while a jazz band played in the background. The professional politicians, adept at the art of greeting people, breezed easily between delegates, their feet barely touching the ground as they shook hand after hand. One delegate launched into a story about how he once cancelled an Easter egg hunt at his house because he thinks the Easter Bunny is a liberal -- handing out treats to those who haven't worked for them.

My appearance here at the RNC was scheduled fairly late, so I have what they call a "Limited Pass" to the convention. It means, basically, I can stand in the lobby of the Xcel Center, but not go into the actual convention hall. As a result, I can file 3,000 posts about how I stood near the doors saying things like "Oooh -- there's Orrin Hatch!" or "Norah O'Donnell is drinking a Diet Pepsi!" Seeing as how I also managed to get sick in the past day, I decided to find a bus back to Minneapolis to rest up.

On the way out of the secure area, we passed the MSNBC set, where Chris Matthews and guests were sitting, ready to go on air. Almost immediately, the contrast between inside the convention and outside the gates was jarring. Whereas everything inside the gates was comfortably positive, outside the gates it was reminiscent of Beirut. Helicopters watched closely from above. Hundreds, if not thousands, of cops in riot gear lined the streets as tattooed, dreadlocked protestors sneered at them. A woman of about 60 walked past the cops, giving them a double middle finger. Many of the protestors carried hand-held video cameras, just waiting to play amateur Spielberg as the inevitable conflict ensued.

As Mike Schramm from WisPolitics and I tried to get to our bus, it was clear that we couldn't get anywhere near the convention center anymore. The police and protestors had filled in behind us, blocking our path back. We ran into Wisconsin's own Brad Vogel (of the Letters in Bottles Blog), who is going to law school in New Orleans, but figured he might as well evacuate to Minneapolis to escape Hurricane Gustav. He mentioned a group of protestors had just been maced a block over. We asked him if he could do us a favor and go get maced himself, so we could write a story and give it a local angle. He politely declined.

What ensued was a two-hour death march to try to get back to the convention center. At first, I thought I had underdressed (jeans, no tie in traditional reporter fashion) for the night's events, but it turned into a blessing, as I could navigate through thousands of malodorous protestors without being harassed. It was unclear to us what exactly they were protesting (and likely unclear to most of them as well), but they should have been demanding universal access to Irish Spring soap.

Just minutes after leaving a large group of protestors, we heard four or five loud explosions that sounded like bombs going off. Cops from our street started scrambling to find out what happened -- but our noses and eyes said it all. Clearly, the group we had just seen had been tear gassed -- and we could feel the effects just a block or so away.

If you think about it, the RNC really is like the Super Bowl of protesting. If you're a professional protestor at the national GOP convention and don't get tear gassed, you really have failed in your attempt to draw attention to your cause. These people probably go home to their parents to lectures like "I was at the RNC in '68 -- we REALLY got tear gassed! You're a shame to our family name! Now smoke this with me."

By the time we were able to make it back inside the gates, it was 9 p.m. and the bus was about to leave. I watched Fred Thompson's speech on a giant outdoor umbotron as I sat on a curb outside the Fox News tent. On the bus ride back to Minneapolis, I found out I missed the day's genuine big event, the Ron Paul Experience at the Target Center. Speakers included Bob Barr, Jesse Ventura and Paul himself. I think in order to gain entrance you had to have some kind of proof that you have killed a man with your bare hands.

The evening ended with another Wisconsin event at Brit's Pub, about five blocks away from the hotel. People seemed to like the cheeseburgers there. The predominant talk still remains Sarah Palin and how excited people are to see her respond to the negative press she's received this week. Today's pre-Palin events for Wisconsin delegates include a Mississippi River boat excursion, hosted by state Rep. Kitty Rhoades.

-- Christian Schneider is a senior fellow at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute. He can be reached at: christian@wpri.org