Articles
Jo Freeman: There’s Plenty To Do at the RNC – If You Have the Right Credentials
by Jo Freeman
Every national nominating convention has plenty of auxiliary events, some authorized, some not. Getting space can be a challenge; getting the word out even more so. But they do it nonetheless. Press were given a RNC 2024 Master Event Calendar, which was updated a few days later. Events began on Sunday and ended on Thursday. The actual convention sessions were just one item on the list. The calendar said if an event was Open or Closed to press, and also whom to contact to register. I’m going to describe some of the events, including a couple I went to, and a couple I was turned away from.
Since my focus is on women, I obviously wanted to go to those events – if I could.
The National Federation of Republican Women is the largest grassroots Republican women's organization in the country with hundreds of clubs. Founded in 1938, its members made the phone calls and knocked on the doors that elected Republican candidates for decades. It’s Tuesday luncheon featured Arkansas Governor Sarah Sanders. The Master Calendar said it was SOLD OUT and they wouldn’t let me in. I was able to get into their lounge at the Fiserv Forum Wednesday evening, where I was repeatedly asked if I was a member, and if not, would I join. “I’m press,” I said. “I can’t join anything partisan.” I then said: “What brings you here?” On hearing that, finding anyone willing to chat with me was like pulling teeth.
Moms for Liberty met in a concert hall that afternoon. I had pre-registered, and I got in. From high in a balcony seat I listened to several people talk about the evils of transgenderism. It’s webpage says WE BELIEVE Power Belongs to the People. Sound Familiar? With a focus is on parental rights, it wants to “STOP WOKE indoctrination.”
Tuesday I went to “The New Mavericks” reception co-hosted by the Black Republican Mayors Association and the Georgia Republican Party. They honored Sen. Tim Scott, four Congressmen and two Georgia delegates – all male. There was only one mayor on stage, from Aurora, IL. The chair of the Georgia Republican Party was the one white man on the stage. At that event, women served; they didn’t speak. The RNC reported that 55 delegates to the 2024 convention are Black, up from 18 in 2016.
I missed the Independent Women’s Forum toast to “Women Who Make Our Country Great” because I went to Convention Fest: The Official Delegate Experience, which was held in the streets outside the Fiserve Forum and Baird Hall as well as some space inside Baird. To get to that one you not only needed a credential of some sort, but a USSS pass (which I have).
Concerned Women for America parked its pink bus across from the Baird Center the week before the RNC. No one was home. When Convention Fest opened on Tuesday afternoon, they set up a pink tent, from which its leaders preached to whomever passed by. It calls itself “the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization” but its focus is evangelical Christian. The slogan on the side of its pink bus captures this emphasis: “She Prays, She Votes.” A prayer precedes each sermon.
How The Health Law Might Be Changed By The Next President
Change in Age Rating Bands: The ACA prohibits insurers from charging more than three times as much for a policy sold to an older person than to a younger person. (This does not affect people over 65 who are covered by Medicare.) This is a change from current law in most states where there are no limits on how much more insurers can charge older people.
KHN: Kaiser Health News
NEWS
BLOG
Video
CARTOONS
Home
Supreme Court
Health Reform
States
Medicare
Medicaid
More Topics
Email Sign-up
RSS
About Us
Contact
inShare
Topics:
Aging
Delive… more »
Nuanced Sexism: Reflections of a female surgery resident
Arghavan Salles writes, "The next time you sit in a meeting where a man takes credit for a woman’s ideas or a woman does all the work on a project for which a man takes credit, think about what you can do to prevent this from happening to your mother, your sister or your daughter." more »
'The American People'?
Joan L. Cannon writes: Every day during campaign seasons, and far too often for my taste on general days, there are too many mentions of 'The American people.' How in the world can anyone be so foolish as even to attempt to make some kind of monolithic entity out of that collective noun? more »
CultureWatch Review: The Receptionist: An Education at the New Yorker
Jill Norgren writes: Tell-all autobiography has the ability to be “satisfyingly scandalous,” with remembrances of friends, colleagues, and lovers “somewhere between mash note and carpet-bombing.” In her years with The New Yorker, she went, she saw, she conquered…and was conquered. more »