Wednesday, January 27, 2016

The Smoked-Filled Room: A Brief History of Contested Conventions

For a few thousand dollars you can spend the night in what may be the original smoke-filled room — the “Smoke Filled Suite’’ at the Renaissance Blackstone Hotel in Chicago, site of the epic 1920 Republican National Convention.
The three-room, ninth-floor corner suite has a fireplace, chandelier and floor from the period. It may be the same space where cigar-chomping party bosses were meeting when they chose Sen. Warren G. Harding, who’d gotten only 7% of the first ballot votes, as the compromise nominee in a deadlocked convention.
The term may have been coined by reporters at the scene, or by Ohio political leader Harry Daugherty, who was quoted as saying: “The convention will be deadlocked and after the other candidates have gone their limit, some 12 or 15 men, worn out and bleary eyed for lack of sleep, will sit down about 2 o’clock in the morning around the table in a smoke-filled room in some hotel and decide the nomination.’’
It’s not certain that the ninth floor suite is where Harding was tapped. Some accounts list the original smoke-filled room as 404, but the hotel says it was far more likely the suite.
The convention, which tapped Harding on the 10th ballot, is one of several that induce a powerful nostalgia among political junkies tired of the scripted pageantry of contemporary conventions.
Read the rest of the story HERE, follow a link to a related story, and view a related video below:

A contested GOP convention — political junkie's dream, politico's nightmare



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1 comment:

cimbri said...

If the GOP establishment tries to steal the nomination from Trump, we'll storm the palace and hand the crown to Trump. You have to beat Trump at the ballot box.