Michelle Malkin tracks anarchist protest plans for the Democrat and Republican National Conventions coming up this summer.

For a long time I wondered why the GOP had a history of holding its conventions in cities known to be distinctly unfriendly to the party. I mean, wouldn’t you want to have a friendly local government siccing the police on the various protesters?

Then a couple of things occurred to me. One, if there are going to be big disruptive protests and/or riots generated by out-of-towners, wouldn’t it make sense to have them in unfriendly territory?

Two, no matter how things go outside the convention, it only serves to make our side look better. No riots? OK, you have a big crowd of GOPers having a good time and basically showing the denizens of the “unfriendly” town that we’re real people, too.

On the other hand, if there are problems with disturbances, the locals have to clean up the mess, and (should) get the inevitable bad press when the batons start swinging.

Me, I’m in favor of batons (and more) when the anarchists cross the line from peaceful protest to active disruption/destruction... but it never looks good in the papers.

Still… I’m put in mind of the line from Thank You For Smoking:

After watching the footage of the Kent State shootings, Bobby Jay, then seventeen, signed up for the National Guard so that he, too, could shoot college students.

Too harsh?

Posted by Russ at 02:03 PM, March 14, 2008 in Politics