Les Jones

News > RNC: NYC Protestors - Next Time, Send Cash and Stay Home

Would the NYC protestors have been better off writing a check to the John Kerry campaign and staying home? The other day I mentioned Lee Harris's idea of fantasy ideology and how it applied to Al Qaeda and protestors. (Not equating them, of course, but just saying that both are more interested in their own fantasy lives than in actually steering politics in a well-defined direction.)

Today the Washington Post estimated there were 200,000 people protesting the Republican National Convention. How much does it cost for five days and four nights lodging, food and incidentals in New York City, plus travel costs, lost wages, and giant puppet heads?

If it was an average of $1,000 per protestor, that's $200 million. Maybe some of them already lived in New York, so cut it in half to $100 million. And maybe some of them crashed with friends, lived cheap, and had puppets that were already paid for. Cut it in half again to $50 million.

That's $50 million that could have been spent buying TV ads for John Kerry, or slightly more than the $45 million the Kerry campaign is planning to spend in key battleground states between now and election day. Doubling Kerry's advertising budget would change a lot more votes than some anachroninny with a puppet show. But, of course, mailing in a check wouldn't enrich the protestors' fantasy lives, which is the real point of the protests.