Republicans Forced To Chicago?

[careless hal]

Chicago could host the Republican National Convention if a hurricane or tropical storm hits Tampa. (Brian Cassella, Chicago Tribune / August 16, 2012)
John Kass
August 24, 2012

With Tropical Storm Isaac threatening to turn into a hurricane and menace the Republican National Convention in Tampa early next week, Republicans must make a decision.

They could just get sloshed on rum, margaritas and whiskey and ride out the storm like real Floridians, and watch young TV reporters hang on to light poles during live shots in hopes of becoming an anchorperson someday.

Or Republicans could quickly change cities and find someplace new for their big shindig.

JOHN KASS


Happily, there is one city that can easily handle such a large crowd, a famous convention-and-restaurant town with an amazing political history and the kind of earthiness that would delight Republican delegates and journalists looking for juicy stories:

Chicago.

Hey, Mitt Romney, How You Doin'?

And why not?

"I think it's a great idea," Illinois Republican Party Chairman Pat Brady said Thursday. "We'll have 50,000 Republicans. They'll be excited and relieved. And we could land them right at Meigs Field."

That's right

[Elgin]

As delegates arrived in Chicago the last week of August 1968 for the 35th Democratic National Convention, they found that Mayor Richard J. Daley, second only to President Lyndon B. Johnson in political influence, had lined the avenues leading to the convention center with posters of trilling birds and blooming flowers. Along with these pleasing pictures, he had ordered new redwood fences installed to screen the squalid lots of the aromatic stockyards adjoining the convention site. At the International Amphitheatre, conventioneers found that the main doors, modeled after a White House portico, had been bulletproofed. The hall itself was surrounded by a steel fence topped with barbed wire. Inside the fence, clusters of armed and helmeted police mingled with security guards and dark-suited agents of the Secret Service. At the apex of the stone gates through which all had to enter was a huge sign bearing the unintentionally ironic words, "HELLO DEMOCRATS! WELCOME TO CHICAGO."
If this Potemkin village setting weren't enough to intensify anxiety among Democrats gathering to nominate their presidential candidate, the very elements and conditions of Chicago life contributed to a sense of impending disaster. The weather was oppressively hot and humid. The air conditioning, the elevators and the phones were operating erratically. Taxis weren't operating at all because the drivers had called a strike before the convention began. The National Guard had been mobilized and ordered to shoot to kill, if necessary.
Even as delegates began entering this encampment, an army of protesters from across the country flowed into the city, camping in parks and filling churches, coffee shops, homes and storefront offices. They were a hybrid group

[Just Saying]

I used to buy a Chicago Tribune every morning on the way to work. When the downstate price went up to $1.50 I quit buying, but I miss reading John Kass. He sure gets under the pols' skins.

[Elgin]

[Just Saying]

[Elgin]

The folks in Louisiana must take comfort in the fact that BO and his very experienced FEMA chief, Craig Fugate, are five steps ahead of Isaac preparation wise. Quite a contrast to the Katrina fiasco, when Bush and that clueless FEMA hack

[Dolfan]

The folks in Louisiana must take comfort in the fact that BO and his very experienced FEMA chief, Craig Fugate, are five steps ahead of Isaac preparation wise. Quite a contrast to the Katrina fiasco, when Bush and that clueless FEMA hack

[Elgin]

If things don

[Danville]

If things don