[...] The Republicans stuck to their script in the face of the flak, hoping that if they can make it here - for at least four days - they can make it anywhere. Vice President Dick Cheney arrived at Ellis Island, opposite the gaping hole in the Manhattan skyline, and praised Mr. Bush as "a man calm in a crisis, comfortable with responsibility and determined to do everything necessary to protect our people."
And some of the delegates suggested that the protests would backfire to Mr. Bush's benefit, by painting Senator John Kerry - whose sister, Peggy, joined some of the weekend's events - as captive to demonstrators outside the mainstream.
"I left God's country," said Leon Mosley of Waterloo, Iowa, co-chairman of his state party. "They could use a bunch of people from Iowa to come here to show New Yorkers what life is all about, what being patriotic is all about, and what country is all about. I'm as confident about Bush being re-elected as I am that eggs are going to be in New York tomorrow morning.''
But some veteran conventiongoers suggested that the Republicans would be unwise to count their chickens just yet. In their own outspoken way, the protesters were making precisely the same point as Mr. Mosley, with children in strollers, grandparents on canes, all accepting the withering Sunday heat - and the overwhelming security presence intended to keep the march past Madison Square Garden orderly. [...]
| That's from Todd S. Purdum's New York Times article "Upstaging Before the Show in True New York Fashion"
He's the one in the big white cowboy hat who isn't from Texas.
And Leon Mosley has seen himself go from being the butt of criticism to the target of autograph seekers at the Republican National Convention.
When a photo of Mosley shaking hands with a Missouri delegate --- the same photo which appeared in Tuesday's Courier and Des Moines Register --- appeared in USA Today, the Black Hawk County supervisor's John Hancock became a hot commodity.
"I've been signing autographs all afternoon," he said. "I'll bet I signed close to 50. The (New York) police department wanted them" in addition to other delegates.
Mosley took heat earlier in the week for some uncomplimentary comments about New Yorkers in The New York Times, in which he said he was misquoted and actually referring to some disruptive anti-Bush demonstrators outside the convention. [...]
| Continue Pat Kinney's Waterloo/Cedar Falls Courier article "Mosley draws autograph seekers"
posted in articles on September 3, 2004 1:13 AM | t (0)
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