I mentioned a few anecdotes last night about the general unpleasantness some New Yorkers have been showing Republicans. The New York Times has a more detailed piece this morning.

A small sampling of New Yorkers’ hospitality, from the Times:

Outside a hotel in Times Square, delegates to the Republican National Convention were swarmed by protesters dressed in black and swearing at them. Blocks away, delegates engaged in shoving matches with protesters seeking to spoil their night at the theater. And outside “The Lion King” on 42nd Street, a delegate was punched by a protester who ran by. . . .

When marchers approached the Garden, a police detective was knocked off his scooter. He was then repeatedly kicked and punched in the head by at least one male demonstrator, the police said. . . .

Yesterday, Jamie Moran, who lives in Brooklyn and describes himself as an anarchist and helps direct the rncnotwelcome.org Web site, was roaming Times Square with a band of protesters shouting at delegates. “These people are in a bubble,” he said. “This is absolutely better than standing outside the Garden and shouting to let them know they are not welcome here.”

As a poll in the New York Sun showed, the majority of these protestors aren’t from Berkley or Seattle–most of them are New Yorkers.

Imagine for a minute that the Democrats held their convention in the most conservative city in America–maybe Salt Lake or Oklahoma City or Huston–what do you think the chances are that the locals would treat them this way?

My piece on last night’s speeches at the Republican convention is posted here.

I’m in Madison Square Garden sitting in the press section watching what amounts to the opening ceremonies of the Republican convention. There are lots of serious pieces posted over at weeklystandard.com, and you should go there, but I have some shallow observations about what’s going on:

(1) Madison Square Garden is a pit. Unlike the gleaming new Fleet Center in Boston, the Garden feels ancient and dilapidated–and not in a charming way.

(2) If you were going to be charitable about the set design, you might call it minimalist. If you were going to be a little more forthright, you would say that it looks cheap and off-the-shelf. Everything in Boston, from the backdrop to the placards with the states’ names on them, was a tiny work of art. Everything here looks as though it’s made of cardboard and plastic. Also, many, many fewer balloons. (What is CNN going to do?!?) Does any of this matter? Of course not. But I’m just saying.

(3) To fill the time between speakers in Boston, the Democrats did a series of “Switch” ads, featuring testimonials from Republicans who said they were voting for Kerry this time around. Here, there are a series of man-on-the-street interviews from young women with RNC microphones who resemble the peppy cub reporters you see on small-town local newscasts.

(4) We aren’t yet at the main event for tonight–Rudy and McCain–but there are a lot of empty seats.

(5) All of which brings me to one of the big questions about this week: What effect are the protesters having? I’ve debated this back and forth with colleagues, and most of them say the protesters hurt Kerry and help Bush. Their rationale is as follows: The protesters are the face of the Democrats this week, and the GOP has effectively labeled them “Democratic protesters” in most news accounts. Calm, in-control grownups like Giuliani, McCain, Cheney, and Bush are the face of Republicans. Advantage: Bush.

This may be so, but I’m not convinced. Boston had the feel of one big party. Walking the streets of midtown Manhattan, there’s tension. Almost every aspect of the convention is tied up with the notion of confrontation. I think that takes a lot of energy and can’t help but sap Republicans who have come here from across the country. As the week goes on, instead of building to a crescendo, they may just get tired of having New Yorkers shouting at them on the streets telling them to “go home” (I’ve heard that) or snickering behind their backs in restaurants (as happened to me tonight).

This isn’t a party so much as an extended high-school cafeteria show-down. And the delegates I’ve seen around town don’t look like they’re having the time of their lives. At least not yet.

On the other hand, Angie Harmon is slated to take the stage in a few minutes, which makes this entire thing a success in my book.

If this item from Drudge is true, it’s even more shocking than the booing Kerry got at Fenway. Not a good sign for him.

David Brooks has a long New York Times Magazine piece this morning. It’s about the future of the Republican party, but it’s most notable for his clear-eyed description of what the war on terror really is:

The War on Islamic extremism. The first great agenda item has been thrust upon us. This has been miscast as a war on terror, but terror is just the means our enemies use. In reality, we’re fighting a war against a specific brand of Islamic extremism, a loose federation of ideologues who seek to dominate the Middle East and return it to the days of the caliphate.

We are in the beginning of this war, where we were against Bolshevism around 1905 or Fascism in the early 1930’s, with enemies that will continue to gain strength, thanks to the demographic bulge in the Middle East producing tens of millions of young men, politically and economically stagnant societies ensuring these young men have nothing positive to do and an indoctrination system designed to turn them into soldiers for the cause. This fight will organize our politics for a generation, as the Cold War did.

What do you think the chances are that President Bush will cast the war on terror in these terms?

I mentioned earlier that Kerry’s April 22, 1971 testimony was worth reading in its entirety. If you haven’t gotten to it, do it now. Some excerpts which haven’t been highlighted yet:

. . . I want to relate to you the feeling that many of the men who have returned to this country express because we are probably angriest about all that we were told about Vietnam and about the mystical war against communism. . . .

***

We saw Vietnam ravaged equally by American bombs as well as by search and destroy missions, as well as by Viet Cong terrorism, and yet we listened while this country tried to blame all of the havoc on the Viet Cong.

***

We fought using weapons against “Oriental human beings,” with quotation marks around that. We fought using weapons against those people which I do not believe this country would dream of using were we fighting in the European theater or let us say a non-Third-World-people theater . . .

***

. . . the point is they are not a free people now under us. They are not a free people, and we cannot fight communism all over the world, and I think we should have learned that lesson by now.

***

An American Indian friend of mine who lives in the Indian Nation at Alcatraz put it to me very succinctly. He told me how as a boy on an Indian reservation he had watched television and he used to cheer the cowboys when they came in and shot the Indians, and then suddenly one day he stopped in Vietnam and he said, “My God, I am doing to these people the very same thing that was done to my people.”

It’s truly an amazine document. If I was John Kerry, I’d much rather debate whether or not I earned my Purple Hearts than whether or not I meant what I said in 1971.

Niall Ferguson has a typically engaging and thoughtful piece over at OpinionJounral. He posits that a Bush defeat might actually be good for conservatism.

You should read it, because it’s Ferguson, and he’s always a fine read. But his larger point is, while very clever, completely wrong.

The smartest thing Fred Barnes ever said to me is that if there’s one Iron Law of Politics, it’s this: Winning always beats losing. When you win, problems recede, divisions smooth over, and you control, at least a little bit, your own direction.

When you lose, problems are magnified, divisions become more pronounced, and–worst of all–you become even more susceptible to events outside your control.

My piece on how the blogosphere forced the old media to cover the Swifties is up now.