x-posted at Economists for Obama
(Note: NMDan wrote a nice diary on this topic last Monday but I thought it was worth raising again in light of the Palin pick and the emerging rifts in the GOP)
I shouldn't be surprised, but I have seen no reporting of Ron Paul's "Rally for the Republic" -an event that is being held at the same time as the GOP convention in Minneapolis. Interestingly the rally has sold nearly 10,000 tickets. Contrast that with the media's incessant discussion of divisions among Democrats last week and the coverage of the 50 or so "PUMAs" (Party Unity My Ass) who supported Hillary and refused to vote for Obama.
During the primaries it was clear that it was the GOP that was fundamentally divided between the neocons, the religious right and the economic conservatives. While Romney fared the best among the economic conservatives, Ron Paul did extremely well in many of the contests and has a loyal group of followers.
While its true that there was something of a gender split among white democrats in the democratic primaries --really an Appalachian vs non-Appalachian split-- there was no fundamental difference on the issues between Obama and Clinton (I'm discounting Krugman's hair splitting).
Its clear that one piece of the media narrative will always be "democrats in disarray" (e.g. 90% of NYT's Adam Nagourney columns over the last 10 years) and simply will ignore similar strains in the GOP.
The Palin pick might start to expose some of these rifts as she has clearly fired up the religious right but I doubt that the necons are too happy about McCain picking a foreign policy neophyte given his views on "the transcendental issue of our time" (see David Frum).