Suggested themes to avoid at NYC’s 2004 Republican National Convention

Actual waste products
As Ed Gillespie, Karl Rove, et al prepare for this fall’s upcoming Republican National Convention in Manhattan, we thought it wise to advise the party’s pollsters to not have President Bush’s chief economist N. Gregory Mankiw give one of his customarily rousing speeches about economic populism, which, in the past, have gone something like this:

Outsourcing jobs overseas is “probably a plus for the economy in the long run…outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade. More things are tradable than were tradable in the past. And that’s a good thing.”

Perhaps Gillespie and Rove might consider having Pennsylvania State Legislator Frank LaGrotta speak:

“I wonder if George Bush believes this. I doubt it, I tell myself. George Bush is a ‘compassionate conservative.’
Compassion: A feeling of empathy, concern, care…
Outsourcing: Treats working Americans like waste products of a Robin-Hood-in-reverse strategy to rob from the poor and give to the rich.”

OK, scratch LaGrotta, too. Better to avoid the topic entirely and stick to “safe” themes, like recalling how close Madison Square Garden is to Ground Zero.