The Garnet Spy

The Republican Party has a number of image problems this year – though the Dems are doing their best to compete – so it behooves the GOP to put on a convention that works to repair those problems.

Primary among these problems are a lack of youth and true conservatism. The former must be a counter to Barack Obama, but it also has to engage the experience issue. The latter may well be the most difficult area to tackle. The slate of GOP candidates this year was painfully shy of valid Reagan conservatives. Fred Thompson’s candidacy wasn’t serious, Mike Huckabee’s too tinged with religious baggage for the national population and Mitt Romney – The Spy’s choice – wasn’t consistently conservative, though he was far moreso than John McCain.

When the national spotlight shines on The Twin Cities the first week in September, Barack Obama will have already registered a serious bounce from the Denver convention just the week before. The GOP needs – desperately – to knock it out of the park.

You can be sure that the MSM will be swooning all over the Dem convention – from the speakers to the “diversity” to the Rocky Mountains to the Hollywood stars in attendance. The GOP can’t afford to have its convention, and, thus, its image, be defined by Katie Couric in contrast to the Democrats.

Essential to this are keynote speakers. Generally, speeches at conventions are dull, painful blatherings by politicians trying to polish their 15 minutes of national fame. But there are those moments that bring the viewing public to a stop. Barack Obama did it in 2004 and, of course, Ronald Reagan forty years before. The GOP needs to carefully choose its speakers this year and project the image of a youthful and revolutionary Republican Party.

The Spy would like to see Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska, get a keynote slot. This lady is dynamite and would send several critical messages for the GOP. She doesn’t mess around and, if there is any truth to the Straight Talk Express, Sarah Palin will have a prime place on the train.

But the prime keynote slot, the one on the next to last night of the convention, should go to Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina. Another no-nonsense executive, Mark Sanford would stand for the future of the GOP, a conservative, visionary future. Sure, he has a little baggage and his detractors, but given that his detractors are the South Carolina Legislature, that’s more of an endorsement than an indictment.

Sanford is only a year older than Obama, who is older than Palin by almost three years. Though Sanford is essentially the same age as Obama, he has considerably more national political experience than does the junior senator from Illinois. The Governor served six years in the House of Representatives and, thus far, six as Governor. Same age, more experience.

Plus, Sanford is a bit of a character. Sleeping on his cot during his years on Capital Hill and, of course, the piglet episode, will be eaten up by the press looking for the fresh and new.

Maybe Sanford and Palin are TOO conservative for John McCain and his chief-of-staff in waiting, Lindsey Graham. This idea to give them speaking time isn’t intended to promote them to national office – neither seems to be so inclined. Rather, it would serve to freshen a stale image, an image all the more encrusted by the Obama show.

See:

• Clyburn, Graham and South Carolina’s National Presence
• Transforming South Carolina’s Image