Every convention has one night when dedicated to firing up the base. For the Democrats, that night was their first night, when Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were both sent onstage with a stiletto and a smile.

For Republicans, tonight was the night to fire up the base. And it was also a night to exact some karmic justice.

So Zell came and dropped off some Hell. In his trademarked firebrand fashion, Zell delivered many a kick to John Kerry's head. He tore off Kerry's own arms and then proceeded to beat him with them.

I'd be lying if I said that it didn't cross my mind that we might have waded a little too deep in the righteous indignation pool. Next up: the major media tries to sell the DNC talking points that Zell was never a real Democrat anyway.

Compare with the report that Santorum had to intervene to get any social conservatives on the podium, and this rings somewhat true.

Also, lots of friction between Bloomberg's New Yorkers and the rest of the RNC personnel. But we could have predicted that one.

Passed on as pure rumor. But rumor with credibility.

Update [2004-9-1 20:2:11 by tacitus]:

Well, I wouldn't call that a disaster by any stretch. But we do have confirmation that it was toned down. Takes your breath away to imagine the original.

More evidence of a demonstrated upswing in the Bush campaign's fortunes.

2. Mike already gave you a pinch on Gov. Bill Owens' performance at the Club for Growth's excellent Future Stars event this morning. The best performances actually came from Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana, the latter of whom launched into a fire and brimstone sermon against the "off-course ship of the Republican Party." While supporting the President, Pence is clearly staking out his territory for the post-election (or post-midterm) bloodbath for control of the party between the big-government and small-government types. But it was Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas who was asked flat-out to run for President - he laughed it off.

3. The anecdotal polling data among the young GOPers participating in today's little rally shouldn't be very encouraging in terms of the youth of the party. While the delegation here is quite conservative by any polled measure, when asked who their pick for the 2008 election is, the mostly college-age crowd of Bush supporters was disproportionately behind Rudy Giuliani as the top choice.

Three reasons ...

We are a younger party; there are more young people in the Democratic Party. They grew up online, they are comfortable online, and the natural extension of that is to move their political activity online. The blogs are a big part of that, and will play a big role this year in electing John Kerry and John Edwards.

Young people -- young Democrats in particular -- are agitated by President Bush. I think that has gotten them really fired up. Blogs are a powerful tool they can use to voice how this Administration’s policies are hurting the country. And I think that’s part of the reason the bloggers have been so helpful to us.

We understand the importance of blogs. We had an extensive operation at the Convention: for the first time we welcomed bloggers into the hall, and let them watch all the festivities. There were over 100 bloggers each day up there overlooking the Fleet Center. We gave them access to the Convention, that’s something we’ve never done before, and something we couldn’t do in 2000. And it's just the beginning, we expect to do a lot more with them.

Thanks, you guys.

There's not much to be said about this event, except that every one of these incidents translates into a Bush vote somewhere; and it's also an excellent opportunity to once again point out that when it comes to AIDS and global health in general, the Bush Administration is the best Administration ever.

The College Republican National Committee, which atrophied to just 409 chapters in 1998, now lists active members on 1,148 campuses. The College Democrats of America say they have members on 903 campuses, 20% fewer.

Meet a Republican delegate after my own heart:

Read on for the full text from the AP.

I love that guy. On Kerry, "They're not going to let him implode. The hatred for Bush and Cheney is just too intense."

On why they hate us so much, "Two reasons. First, Gore people really can't get over the fact that they got screwed, in their view. Second, Bill Clinton. Republicans could have gotten a censure vote of 100-0. Dianne Feinstein said that she would vote to censure but she wouldn't vote to impleach. Republicans should have taken the crumbs when they couldn't get the loaf. When they pushed for impeachment, they created this white-hot cauldron of hate."

I think he's right.

• Kerry's standing with Veterans has gone down dramatically.
  
• His Vietnam service is no longer an effective inoculant against `weak on defense' attacks.
  
• A non-trivial portion of the electorate now doubts his honesty about his service.
  
• The public has been duly reminded of Kerry's anti-war activities.
  
• The President has gained a slight lead in the polls going into his convention, thus giving his campaign the initiative, and maximizing the possible positive impact of the convention itself on his polling numbers.
  

"You can have the right ideas and the right record. But if you don't have the ability to get those ideas and that record out in America - you might just get beat."