The Denver Post blog reports:
This morning, Republicans tell me that a worker at Invesco Field in Denver saved thousands of unused flags from the Democratic National Convention that were headed for the garbage. Guerrilla campaigning. They will use these flags at their own event today in Colorado Springs with John McCain and Sarah Palin. . .
“What you see in the picture I sent you is less than half of total flags,” a Republican official emailed. “We estimate the total number to be around 12,000 small flags and one full size 3×5 flag.”
I’m not sure what the DNC was supposed to do with unused hand-flags, frankly. But the Republicans are obviously questioning someone’s patriotism here.
(Via Hot Air.)
It would be hard to dispose of so many flags properly (although they could have managed it if they had cared to), but it’s not at all hard to think of other things they could have done with them: First, ask attendees to take a flag home, and second, store the leftover flags, rather than throwing them away. Frankly, these are obvious things to do, if they had even thought about the problem. They even could have gotten a little bit of good press for it. Instead, they underscored their existing reputation.
It’s nice for the Republicans to rescue the flags, but I hope they don’t make too big a deal over it. It would look cheap, I think. Better to keep it in the background and leak the story to friendly media. And I sure hope they dealt with the RNC’s flags properly.
UPDATE: The Democrats are outraged, of course:
Democratic convention organizers claimed the flags were not going to be discarded — but instead were snatched from the site of Obama’s historic address to carry out a “cheap political stunt.”
UPDATE: The person who found the flags says they were sitting for over a week in bags near the trash. Sounds discarded to me. Until the Democrats decide to call him a liar, this is settled.
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