The GOP Convention Sideshow ST. PAUL, MN (wypr) - If national political conventions always draw party heavyweights, they also draw a sideshow almost as good as the main attraction inside the convention hall. WYPR's Joel McCord found one this week at the gates to the Republican National Convention.

While the under card of speakers went on inside St. Paul's XCel Center, there was a different show going on around the fountain in Rice Park. A man with a bull horn held up a sign with a picture of what he said was an aborted fetus and railed against abortion and both parties candidates. And he got into it with a passerby.

That is not true what you're saying. You are misinformed, young lady. No I'm not. Yes you are. Oh no, I'm not. Yeah, well you live in a fantasy world, No, don't tell me I live in a fantasy world.

Next to him, Steve Lefermine, director of Columbia Christians For Life in South Carolina, shouldered a large hand-painted sign that declared John McCain is not pro-life.

John McCain does not have a Biblical or Constitutional world view. John McCain claims to be pro-life, but he also supports exceptions to a ban on abortions. John McCain has also voted twice to fund embryonic stem cell research.

And as if that's not bad enough, Lefemine said, McCain also has voted for budget appropriations for the Department of Health and Human Services.

These HHS appropriations includes tens of millions of dollars through Title Ten for Planned Parenthood. And any informed American or pro-lifer should know that Planned Parenthood has the largest chain of abortion centers in the country.

And just a few steps from him was Steve Anthony, standing quietly inside the homemade circular cage he hauled across the Mississippi from Minneapolis. A wooden sign announced it was a Free Speech Pen.

It's a little comment on what's happened to our Constitutional rights during the last eight years, the progressive restriction of free speech, freedom of the press, many other freedoms.


He had been there only a few hours, but he said he was having a lot of fun, even if he was only standing there.

Everybody's taking my picture; I mean I've never had my picture taken like this. People interview me, TV, radio, newspapers. So it's kind of a little bit of a teaching device that's more effective than just carrying a sign. It's sort of three dimensional sign.

RNC, I was there, five dollars

Then there was the guy trying to unload a pile of Republican National Convention T-shirts and others with all sorts of buttons, key chains and refrigerator magnets frantically trying to sell them all before the crowds leave town.

Chris Matthews and the MSNBC pundits were holding forth on a stage near the fountain; two members of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals dressed up in pink pig suits waved signs demanding, End Pork; Tax Meat.

Perhaps the most incongruous sign was carried by Porter Davis: a hand lettered neon green affair declaring he was a delegate for peace.

Before we had a Republican president wage a war of choice, most Republicans probably would have been against the war. I firmly believe, and I've told many Republicans this. If Al Gore had been elected in 2000 and done exactly the same things that President Bush has done they would be storming the barricades in Washington.

In his view, the Republican delegate from Oklahoma said, it's the Democrats who start wars.

In fact, President Bush, when he was Governor Bush campaigning for president, came out squarely against nation-building and what he called a kinder, gentler, more humble foreign policy. And I thought I actually voted for him in 2000. I thought at least he can't do too much harm.

No, Davis isn't voting for Barack Obama; he's a Ron Paul supporter. And he hasn't decided what he'll do on Election Day.

When the speeches are over, the balloons and confetti have dropped and the hall empties out, the T-shirt hawkers are sill there and the MSNBC pundits are still at it, long into the night.

I'm Joel McCord, reporting from the Republican National Convention in St. Paul for 88.1, WYPR.
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