NEW YORK -- The hot place to be this morning was the Trianon Ballroom in the Hilton New York Hotel. This is where hundreds of delegates and activists from Florida -- yes, that Florida, the one of confused voters, recounts and dangling chads -- gathered for their morning meeting.
For the 99.9999 percent of you who have never and will never attend a Republican or Democratic convention delegates' meeting let me say, fret not, you haven't missed much. Not a lot of real news is made at these things.
Most people watching from home only see an hour or two of the convention floor during prime time, when the featured speakers take the stage. But much of the convention days are spent in delegation meetings and "rah-rah" sessions for the party faithful. Occasionally they can be amusing and entertaining, as the Florida meeting was this morning.
As befits its status as the big-state-that-makes-or-breaks, the Republican Party pulled out the big guns. The Florida crowd got a heaping dose of the ex-president (George H. W. Bush) and former first lady (Barbara Bush) and heartthrob up-and-comer (presidential nephew/gubernatorial son George P. Bush) to go along with their cold eggs and stale pastries. That was after super-conservative stalwart Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.) fired them up by casting the effort to reelect President Bush as just one battle in the larger war over abortion and other social issues.
"A society that does not respect life is not a society that will survive," Santorum told the crowd. "We haven't done a good enough job in defining the war abroad. But we also haven't done a good enough job defining the war here at home."
Later, Republican operative/ubiquitous TV personality Mary Matalin took the stage to tell funny stories about her hubbie, Democratic operative/ubiquitous TV personality James Carville, including how Florida Gov. Jeb Bush came up with a now well-known nickname for Carville: Serpent Head.
Matalin kept the crowd warm with witticisms until the Bushes showed up a little after 9 a.m., when George P. (now married and officially off the market) said he was there filling in for his father, who decided to stay in Florida to deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Charley and the threatening Hurricane Frances.
Barbara Bush, always a crowd favorite in these circles, did not disappoint. She joked about her husband's appearance on the Imus in the Morning show Wednesday morning. The former first lady, who is said to never forget a slight, recalled how Imus had "gotten my goat" some years back when, during an interview with former Texas governor Ann Richards, Imus called her a "prune faced, wrinkled old lady."
"Boooooooo," went the crowd.
Then with a comic's precision timing: "I beat her hands down in that category," the former first lady said of Richards.
Her husband followed her at the podium. The years away from the public spotlight have apparently been cathartic for the once uptight president, who now feels free to say things he never could before. He recalled how two years ago Democratic National Committee chairman, "that horrible Terry McAuliffe," had put his son Jeb's state at the top of the list of gubernatorial takeovers. Jeb, of course, went on to win with a double-digit margin. "I'm sitting there and I'm like, you take that Terry McAuliffe!"
The former president said he'd always told his kids not to just sit around watching TV complaining about the things they didn't like. "Now I just sit there and complain, and it's a wonderful feeling." What does he complain about? The baddies in the media, of course. (Take THAT Newsweek!).
Of course, all of the GOP starpower has a serious purpose. It is to remind Florida of its importance in electoral politics this year and that each and every vote matters (well, those that are counted anyway). The delegates here said they got the message.
"It might be close, but then again, it might not be as close as you think," said Sidney Charles, a delegates from Miami-Dade County, who heads Bush's Caribbean and Haitian Coalition. "People want consistency, and this president has led us through a horrible tragedy. He's working to make sure this country is still safe, and he's kept the economy going."
I was also able to grab a word with state Republican Chairman Al Cardenas, who predicted that the tide was turning in Bush's favor both nationally and in Florida.
"Politics is a lot like shopping for a car," he said. "You go in and look at it and it's very nice. Then you take it for a ride and start to look at all the details, and you realize maybe it's not so nice. This is John Kerry. He's not wearing well."
