I spent last night amongst “the enemy,” red-blooded, real Republicans, who were gathered in bars in St. Paul watching the headlining show. At upscale steakhouse Kincaid’s in downtown St. Paul, I sipped from a martini and slurped oysters and tried my best to fit in even though I was not at all dressed appropriately. I had come from the AntiWar March and figured for that occasion, I should wear comfortable clothes and look like a regular person, lest I get arrested. I gave up on the protesters, who were still having a sit down when I left (they later got arrested), and because the apartment where I was staying was literally at the end of the street that was being blocked by the protest, I had to walk all the way into downtown. This meant, basically, I looked like a scummy lefty dirtbag. One thing I’ll say about the Republicans: They are always dressed nice. Some aren’t necessarily stylish, but the men are always looking pretty sharp in suits. It made you almost want to try it (the men and dressing up) out for size.

At Kincaid’s I ended up talking with a man I’ll call Stan who was a driver for a legislator from a key battleground state. He told me some funny stories, including the fact that the man’s campaign staff, “young pups,” as he called them, always made fun of his foibles when he wasn’t around.

Stan was a local, a genial Minnesotan, who drank a bottle of O’Douls as he ate his food. His son was one of the police who had to deal with the protesters. Stan helpfully shared some tips on getting into the parties.

Unlike at the Democratic National Convention, the parties were closed off due to potential disruptions from Democratic protesters. I had set out to find actual Republicans and go to official events but without a credential, I was persona nongrata. Stan told me to wear my best party dress and as people were walking in ask if you could go in with them; he’d seen it done several times, with success. Alas, his advice came too late; as it was Thursday, I never go to try it out.

His funniest story, though, had to do with two men. They crashed the party by donning black suits and sunglasses (at night), and stuck a black earpiece complete with coil around their necks. They sailed in claiming they were part of the Mayor’s detail.

To my right, I was sitting with a delegate from another battleground state who was still in the bar one hour before McCain’s speech. He was an alternate but had a nice seat on the floor and was putting off going inside. His female companion piped up and said, “Trust me, it’s really boring for the first few hours.” By the time the main speeches started he had somewhat reluctantly bailed.

For a change of scenery, I headed to a frat sports bar down the street called Wyld Time. They were loaded up with TVs, but stupidly, none of them were set to close captioning. The bar was slammed when we walked in, but by the time McCain was on it had cleared out, save for a few frat types, a lone Republican couple, and a trio of kids, one of whom appeared to be doing Sarah Palin in drag. You heard it here first: Sarah Palin will be this year’s big Halloween costume.

The energy in the bar was as dead as McCain’s speech. As I suspected, he (mostly) played nice; there were two instances that were outright potshots, one of which was a cockamamie load of shite. He snuck in a jab at “The One,” which I thought was beneath him; but the other one was more egregious and he should be ashamed of himself. He insinuated that a government-supported health care program would be tantamount to socialism and asked if we’d like to have to deal with a bureaucrat getting between us and a doctor. This is such a huge falsehood and also demonstrates the huge disconnect with his reality (that of a rich and powerful politician) and regular people. John McCain, let me introduce you HMO’s. There are already a number of bureaucrats between me and my doctors; and what’s worse, it’s expensive and limiting. This makes your argument toast.

On my way back to L.A., I sat next to a man who was head-to-toe in McCain regalia, wearing a McCain hat and t-shirt (which said Californians for McCain). He turned out to be a really nice guy who was also Jewish. He described his politics as social libertarian, fiscal conservative. He was yet another one of the Republicans I had encountered in my Excellent Adventure With the Enemy (to paraphrase Mike Huckabee’s speech) who did not care for the social wedge issues being used to hijack his party. He too believed that the Bush administration had committed some egregious errors concerning Iraq and the economy, and that McCain would get the party back to center, where it belonged. He was working on a documentary, and though he was a delegate, spent much of his time chasing politicians on the floor. He said he had talked to a woman from the Christian Coalition and had pointed out that her pushing Christianity in the party made him-as a Jew, feel uncomfortable. He said, she wasn’t so nice to him after that.

He’d been a longtime fan of McCain, but had voted for Clinton and Reagan. I argued with him about Palin, who I think has been chosen because she’s a woman and because she’s being used as a gimmick. If McCain wanted to fire up the social conservatives of the base and appeal to the average Joe, he could just as easily picked Mike Huckabee, but he didn’t. He picked Sarah Palin because Barack Obama did not put Hillary Clinton on the ticket. My seatmate did agree that if Clinton had been the VP pick, we’d never heard the words, “Sarah Palin.”

He also defended the notion that McCain has changed his stances; I am not as well read on the subject as he is, but he said that McCain hadn’t flipped positions on immigration (that they had been given a pamphlet of policies, and that it’s the same as it’s ever been), so it’s just a media position. He also defended McCain’s switch on drilling: five years ago, he explained, it was not a necessary action, as it is now, and that he’s changed his opinion to fit with the situation, which seems fair enough. Of all the Republicans I’ve ever seen, McCain (or, at least the version offered up in 2000) is probably the only one I would ever consider voting for. The problem now is I have no idea who he really is. Will the real John McCain stand up?

As we exited the plane, a man who looked like a cop or a firefighter, asked him: “Did you convert her?”

“No,” said my seatmate. “But I did pretty good.”

This didn’t stop downtown St. Paul from turning into a police state. On nearly every corner you could see clusters of military, police officers, and members of the National Guard surveying their surroundings. When an action was planned, like the one on Wednesday, and again on Thursday, the police responded with a show of force that some would call a bit heavy-handed. Officers stood in long lines with face masks, body armor, and plastic cuffs at the ready.

Their opponents? The usual scrappy college kid with green hair, striped leggings, and a blase demeanor. On the stage at the Capitol Thursday, the organizers shouted the perfunctory lefty call to arms—we heard a “Free Palestine!” and urged their followers to be strong; the organizers didn’t get their permit, so their original plan to march to the Xcel Center before John McCain’s acceptance speech was derailed.

The throng walked speedily over John Ireland and were blocked on a bridge overlooking the freeway. Police surrounded the protesters in the front and in the back, boxing them in. Initially, the front row of officers holding back the ground were on horses; behind them stood a line of the masked crusaders. The media surrounded the protesters, who were sitting down, and people stood along the sides to try and get a glimpse of the action, their backs hanging over the bridge. Whoever thought to make this the stopping point was a real genius.

The horses neighed and a few bucked up; there was a moment when the tension between the officers and the protesters reached a shrill point. At the Capitol an officer yelled menacingly to a woman who was taking a photo to get off the sidewalk. As protesters passed by the lines of police, a few gave the finger; others threw a peace sign, instead. It felt like either side was ready to pick a fight. After a few minutes, it became clear that the action would be relegated to some protesting cyclists riding around in circles near the back as they taunted the bicycle cops. “Hey bicycle cops! Join the party! Come out and play!” Later, it turned out, one side blinked, and the protesters were arrested.

It’s a strange day when you are at a panel for the Republican National Convention where the subject is about National Defense and the U.S. approach to global trade, and a high-ranking Democrat shows up to explain how the next Republican administration will likely handle such matters. Though the panel at The University of Minnesota’s  Hubert M. Humphrey’s Institute for Public Affairs had a pretty impressive list of people, including Ambassador Robert Portman, Ambassador Richard Williamson, and no less than Robert C. (Bud) McFarlane, the man behind Star Wars, it was the Joe Lieberman show.

With Portman by his side, he turned up late in the midst of a discussion about how a McCain administration would handle global threats and deal with world trade. Williamson, who is a special envoy to Sudan, explained that there are three areas of focus for the McCain administration: Iran China, and Russia. The relationship with latter two especially have to be, in his words, “recalibrated.”  And, there was a great deal of discussion pertaining to private businesses supplementing the military—which the panel pointed out that both Obama and McCain are in favor of.

When Lieberman arrived the conversation shifted to how the U.S. could influence the Islamic world through less invasive means. The answer it turned out was schools. Lieberman noted that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair made a simple suggestion—to institute an international education fund that governments could contribute to as well as private businesses which would fund the building of schools in Islamic areas. He stressed that they would be “indigenous.” He noted that the schools that are the most appealing are the madrasses, because of they are better-kept, but that serves to educate a teeming mass of people who grow up to hate the West.

The schools are one of the ways he said that could answer the question: “How do you stop the cycle of ideological, theological hatred of our children,” he asked. “There is good and evil in the world and there are some people who just hate us for no reason and hate our allies, ultimately only going to make them less threatening members of the international community by either arousing fear or confronting them.”

McFarlane piped in and explained: “There are a half a million kids, but they are not all Bin Ladens, but they are willing to blow themselves up.”

Lieberman reinforced his belief that a McCain presidency will do wonders for the country on an international front: “Some voters, especially some who haven’t studied his record, will see him as inclined toward military action because of the visibility and persistency on the questions surrounding the Iraq War,” he said. “He has a veteran’s distaste for military conflict, because a. he’s been through it, and he’s seen his friends die, and was a POW for seven years.”

Lieberman said that McCain is one, “a strong believer in the power of our ideas, and two, believes in the importance of economic assistance and three the powerful role that free trade  plays, not only in supporting economic growth in our country, but in elevating literally billions of people in the world out of extreme poverty over the last several decades. John’s a believer in “soft” American power.”

He also said that Obama has changed his tune and isn’t as open to open trade which he believes will hurt us. He pointed out that it was another Democrat who had a forward-thinking outlook on global trade: Bill Clinton. Clinton’s administration, said Lieberman, pointed out that “there’s only so much you can make and sell to each other.”

Lieberman also called John McCain a “reformer.” “He’s going to take a very fresh look at our foreign and defense institutions, agencies. I think you can expect a shake up. The State Dept, USAID, and the diplomacy part of our government will get a lot more support and centrality. We need better public diplomacy to get our case out to the Islamic world.”

As he could only stay for a few minutes, Lieberman left the session with a quip: “This is a remarkably substantive conversation for a political convention,” to which the policy wonks in the crowd laughed wholeheartedly.

While most people would have you believe that Barack Obama has a lock on the youth vote, there’s a pretty large group of people who might tell you otherwise: The Young Republicans. I had arrived at the RNC without a credential but hoping that I might go to actual Republican events, (and not ironically). I wanted to meet the folks whose very name conjures up images of Alex P. Keaton. So, I did the most logical thing: I Facebooked them.

The next day (yesterday), run down from a sinus infection and a fever, yet still hopeful I might find a delegate or two to interview, I was in the women’s restroom washing my hands next to an attractive, well-dressed woman when I noticed her Texas delegate tag hanging around her neck.

I asked her if I could interview her and she said yes. It turns out that Jessica Colón, 33, is not only a lifelong Republican, but she’s also the Chairman of the Young Republicans.

“Omigod!” I exclaimed, not very professionally. “I totally Facebooked you last night!”

We bonded. She explained the lengthy three-and-a-half month delegate process to me: there’s primary proceedings, district, state, and congressional district hoops to jump. Or you can run at-large, which is what she did.

She’s been a member of the Young Republicans since high school and has risen through the ranks to the national level. A third generation American, Colón’s family emigrated from Croatia, “legally, quite frankly,” she noted. “They came here to live the American dream and they did. They worked, raised four kids, and built a house and helped their family come over and assimilate and integrate.” She said her great-grandmother even refused to cash her Social Security checks, because “she never wanted to take from the country that gave so much to her.”

I asked Colón what her three most important platforms were and she said without hesitation: “Energy, national security and fiscal responsibility.” She noted ruefully that the Democrats have cherry-picked the energy issue. “That energy issue is something the Republicans have been fighting since the 70s, and every single time a bill comes to the floor of the house, it’s blocked by the Democrats, and it’s just recently now that they’ve seen it’s an issue that they can run on, they have made some progress toward that,” she said. “The Republicans have been talking about this for three decades.”

What’s been interesting in my limited conversations with the Republicans is that none of them note the issues that Democrats are most averse to: abortion or gay rights. Though the Republican Party plays up the Pro-Life stance and what they call “sustaining the definition of marriage,” these issues don’t seem to be the most important ones to the people I meet.

Colón explains: “I think the Republican Party is a big tent party, and we’re a party based on ideology rather than identity. Everyone’s united behind energy, strong national defense, less spending, and less government. These ideologies, the strict interpretation of the Constitution, wanting to make sure conservative justices are brought into the Supreme Court, that’s what we want to get behind, not behind any one identity. No matter where you are there are going to be issues that people feel are wedge issues.”

Sarah Palin is almost a direct illustration of her point. The Alaskan Pro-Life governor has instantly sealed the deal for the base. “The entire base, and not any one faction of the base,” said Colón. “And the base, remember, typically are people who are active and engaged in the Republican Party regularly. So it’s not just evangelicals, it’s not just women, it’s not identity. She has ignited the entire Republican base. She has united, honestly united, this party around Senator McCain. That decision has brought new life to this campaign.”

Colón thinks Obama’s a “great speaker” but believes that John McCain will do better with the youth. “Authenticity resonates with young voters, and we’ve started to see Senator Obama come down in the polls with the 18 to 29 year old vote and Senator McCain’s up, and I think that trend will continue as Senator McCain continues to get our more and more during the general election.”

That’s where Jessica and I will have to agree to disagree. But we can still be Facebook friends.

I am at the Republican National Convention, and though I am a staunch Democrat who’s possibly even further to the left of Dennis Kucinich, I decided that I must immerse myself in real GOP Culture and not just hang out with unwashed lefty anarchists. Of course, the most painless way to do this for a Democrat such as myself is to spend some time getting used to the Other Side with a contingent I’m very familiar and comfortable with: The Gays, or in this case, the Log Cabin Republicans. Yes, Dorothy, there are Gay Republicans. And no, we’re not in Kansas, anymore.

I told Log Cabin Communications Director Scott Tucker that my friends were perplexed by Log Cabin Republicans’ very existence, as was I. He didn’t miss a beat. “Did they look at you like you had three heads?”

Yes they did. And if you were wondering, Tucker and his fellow Republicans don’t have three heads, either. I spoke with him after their “Big Tent” classy lunch, where all the attendees sat at white tableclothed tables eating fine fare while us journos stood in the back looking like disheveled cattle. He explained that they were endorsing Senator John McCain because they believe he will be an “inclusive” president. They declined, after George W. Bush started a stampede on gay rights with the Federal Marriage Amendment, to endorse W. He said of McCain, “We have a relationship going back with McCain to the early 1990s. Sen McCain stood with us on the Fed Marriage Amendment twice and he stood on the floor with us in 2006 and gave a very impassioned speech about that amendment, calling it antithetical in every way to the core philosophy of Republicans.”

The core philosophy is what might make even certain Dems wistful for the days of Alex P. Keaton. Remember when Republicans were mostly about spending money responsibly, smaller, less intrusive government, and strong national defense—and not about Bible thumping yahoos? After W., it’s hard to remember, but you have to reach back before the Reagan years. It was during those years that the Republican party rounded up the right-wing religious fanatics, the James Dobsons and Jerry Falwells of the world, cherry picking certain social issues that had previously belonged to the Dems—like abortion, and now gay rights—to drive a wedge right through the center. ( A good primer on this is the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Haynes Johnson’s book, Sleepwalking Through HIstory: America in the Reagan Years.)

“I would argue the Ronald Reagan never used these issues himself,” said Tucker. That’s the party Tucker and the Log Cabin Republicans hope to bring back: “The way I look at it is those people are going to leave this party before I do,” he said of the extremist factions.

Yes, but what of Sarah Palin, the would-be VP? She’s vocally against gay marriage (as are all the other politicians on both tickets,) and supported a bill banning gay marriage way back in 1998.

In 2006, she struck down a bill that would have denied benefits to gay state employees, but only on the grounds that it was unconstitutional. Still, the eminently quotable Tucker couldn’t really suss out Palin, and left the unflappable flack a little tongue-tied. “Gov. Palin’s positions on gay and lesbian issues is largely unclear,” (nope, they are not, see above), he said and didn’t directly address her support of the ban in 1998.

Even with all their strides, it’s not easy being gay in the GOP. He beamed with pride talking about how 49% of the GOP delegates support civil unions and/or gay marriage, according to a CBS News/New York Times poll, (”That’s half of Republican delegates! These are party faithful, party activists!” he said, hopefully) and noted that during their open booth at the Civic Fest in the hours they were there, and out of the hundreds of people they talked to, only two people said, “Read your Bible,” before walking away. On the battleground front, there’s more work to be done: “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell looks to be on its last legs, and with Cali Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vocally against the Prop 8 ballot initiative, which would overturn the state’s Supreme Court decision recognizing gay marriages, the gays have come a long way, baby.

Tucker allowed that they have “some disagreements with Sen McCain related to gay rights. The employment non-discrimination act, McCain doesn’t support.” And he admits, “Senator Obama has promised a lot of wonderful things. If you’re looking at the very narrow prism of the very specific gay and lesbian rights issues, we’re not going to argue that Republicans are better than Democrats—we never have. Democrats have come farther than Republicans on gay rights issues, if you’re looking at that — quote, unquote — scorecard of issues.”

Still, Tucker points out that Dems are no great shakes, either, especially Donkey rock star, Bill Clinton, who signed both “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” and the “Defense of Marriage Act,” into law. “He was a great disappointment for the LGBT community,” said Tucker. “A Democratic president signed two pieces of legislation that the gay and lesbian community spends most of their money and time fighting and trying to overturn.”

If you’re wondering why they insist on working for a party that largely hates them, Tucker explains their Sysyphean battle thus: “We want to get our party more inclusive on these issues. And we have to come further on these issues otherwise we’ll be on the wrong side of history if we don’t.”

The Annenberg School has been all over both conventions, teaming up with Politico to host a few panel discussions. We caught the tail end of one at the Minnesota Public Radio building in downtown St. Paul. The panel’s title was “Bridging the Political Divide in the 2008 Election. Professor, Dean Emeritus, Geoffrey Cowan welcomed the panel which included an assortment of heavyweight political journos, including Catalina Camia, of USA Today, Nina Easton, editor at Fortune magazine, and Politico’s Roger Simon.

It appeared that there had been a debate over whether or not the media was biased—and one audience member questioned the (non) coverage of John Edwards scandal in the mainstream press. Simon posed another question, in an age when a rumor makes it onto big internet sites in less than 24 hours, (see Sarah Palin, Down’s Syndrome, not really her baby rumor) do you just “put everything out?” The instructive answer is the New York Times‘ prematurely published John McCain investigation, which Simon said tried to make the case that McCain “allegedly, maybe, had an affair,” with an attractive female lobbyist.

In this sense, the Times and other papers are damned if they do, damned if they don’t.

I arrived late Monday night, which meant I missed that day’s non-festivities. Just as well.

Today started out muggy and hot and soon turned gray and limpid, with drizzly rain and gusts of wind dotting downtown St. Paul. If it weren’t for the clusters of National Guard and police on corners surrounding the Xcel Center, you’d have no clue that thousands of people were in town to nominate the Republican candidate for president of the United States. The Xcel Center fills the window of the apartment where I am staying, yet I watched the proceedings  on TV. They might as well have been a million miles away.