Of all of last night's anti-Obama salvos, none disturbed me more than Giuliani and Palin's absurd knocks against community organizing. Absurd because delegates, as party officials/loyalists who will get out the Republican vote in their communities this fall, are themselves community organizers. The difference is community organizers don't hold formal political power, effecting change from outside of government. Not surprising Republicans might not like this.
I couldn't help but hear racial undertones in the jibes. With Giuliani's comment especially, he was actually deriding community organizing as a politically meaningful endeavor. So I wondered: Did delegates think the remarks went over the line?
Guess what? The people I just spoke with in the Excel Center a little while ago felt it was an appropriate and necessary effort to define Palin as an "executive" (when any word is repeated too much, it ceases to have real meaning) ready for the vice-presidency.
A Texan alternate delegate repeated to me what was said last night: that Palin has executive experience, unlike Obama and Biden (as if being mayor of a small town trumps being chairman of the senate's foreign relations committee), and that Obama abstained during many Illinois senate votes. This had nothing to do with Obama's years on Chicago's South Side, and the value of community organizing, but she didn't seem to know anything about those years.
Another woman, Donna Hrozencik (a self-described independent from Ann Arbor, Mich., whose husband is a delegate), felt Palin had to define herself aggressively, and that the attacks weren't about denigrating Obama, they were about lifting up Palin. "I thought her speech went over phenomenally well," Hrozenik said.
Of course it did. As she noted, "Obviously, you're preaching your the choir."
And therein lies what worries me so much listening to these fiery, negative speeches: that people are ready to cheer whatever attacks are offered up by GOP leaders, will endorse any falsehoods and character assassinations as truth. Victory at all costs. Here in the Excel Center, Palin's speech was destined for success, because delegates cannot bear to imagine an unsuccessful party. And so Obama's years of community activism in Chicago became nothing before Palin's years as mayor of tiny Wasilla.
Absurdity becomes truth, as party loyalty trumps reality.
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Jeremy Gantz is an In These Times contributing editor working at Time magazine.
