GOP snipers fire from a secret 'war room'
Along with the swarms of Democrats teeming in Boston's streets, there are a few dozen Republicans who have come to town for the Democratic National Convention, but they've gone underground, working diligently in what could be called, in a familiar GOP phrase, an undisclosed location.
Roughly 30 operatives from the Republican National Committee have set up a ''war room" in rented office space a few blocks from the FleetCenter. Their job: to shoot down, spin, and drown out the Democratic images and rhetoric coming off the convention stage.
''We understand that we're swimming upstream here in Boston, but we're going to swim anyway," Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie said.
The Republicans plan to stage daily press conferences and utilize the tools of modern technology to counter the Democrats. In one room, young workers troll the Internet for any campaign-related news, compiling the stories for Gillespie and other GOP bigwigs and collecting grist for e-mail blasts to reporters.
In another, Scott ''Hogie" Hogenson, his radio-ready voice made even more gravelly by the Winstons he keeps in his breast pocket, is busy booking interviews for Bush surrogates on radio programs heard in key battleground states. The sounds of Spanish emanate from a third, as workers try to connect with Spanish-speaking media. In nearly every room, televisions provide a constant stream of convention coverage.
Last night, as Al Gore delivered his speech to the delegates, the rapid response team was dissecting an advance copy for inaccuracies. In a conference call with Bush-Cheney headquarters in Arlington, Va., an aide in Boston suggested punching holes in Gore's criticism of the Bush economy by noting that the downturn began on Bill Clinton's watch.
Within minutes, the team had produced a press release attacking the Clinton administration's failure to fight terrorism, topping it with a fresh quote from Gore's speech.
The Republican response team sprang into action even before there was any convention rhetoric to counter. Bush surrogates, Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey among them, were on radio and television programs 11 hours before the convention officially opened at 4 p.m. And the war room staff sent a steady stream of e-mail to political reporters all day, ridiculing statements made on Sunday by vice presidential candidate John Edwards and Senator Edward M. Kennedy.
''This is more extensive, more aggressive than what we've done in the past," said Christine Iverson, press secretary for the Republican National Committee.
The Republicans began moving into their hastily arranged office Wednesday. Boxes marked ''Rent A PC" are stacked in piles reaching almost to the ceiling. But the staff has found time to cover the walls with decorations that encapsulate the GOP theme for the week: that the Democratic Party is using the convention to make Kerry and Edwards appear less liberal than they actually are.
A Kerry quote from 1991 -- ''I'm a liberal, and I'm proud of it" -- features prominently in the office decor, hung right next to Kerry's assertion earlier this month that ''I'm not a liberal; I represent the conservative values they feel." The use of contrasting quotes has become a war-room staple for both parties since the advent of the Internet made it easier to track them down.
Gillespie described Kerry's Senate votes as ''a long shadow that Democrats will try to hide with lights, camera, and rhetoric." Healey echoed that theme during a series of afternoon television interviews, which were conducted from a makeshift studio on the second floor, at the top of a narrow spiral staircase.
''We're not here this week to attack John Kerry and John Edwards," Healey said, repeating a message she delivered to radio audiences in Nebraska and New Jersey during the morning commute. ''What we're here to do is hold their feet to the fire on their records."
Still, among the GOP team's e-mailed dispatches yesterday was a photo of an awkward-looking Kerry dressed in a spacesuit during his visit to Cape Canaveral. They included a copy of the disastrous 1988 image of Michael Dukakis in a tank. The subject line of the e-mail read: ''Earth to Kerry."
Despite the Republicans' efforts, their undisclosed location didn't remain hidden, at least not to ''Billionaires for Bush," a top hat-and-parasol-toting group of Kerry supporters lampooning what they say is Bush's wealthy constituency, who buttonholed reporters exiting a morning news conference.
