Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit, as George Orwell put it in regard to the English language, that the American political convention, once a dynamic and informative institution, has morphed into a peculiar spectacle valued more for its flamboyance than its relevance, so when the opportunity arose to attend the 2012 edition of the GOP’s quadrennial shindig in Tampa as a member of the press, the temptation to jump on a plane and indulge in a little amateur anthropology—the Republicans were as exotic as Trobriand Islanders to this writer—proved irresistible.
