So, now that the “My word” and “Well, I do declare” reactions to the Nevada Host Committee’s bid to land the 2016 Republican National Convention in Las Vegas have subsided a bit, it’s a good time to take stock of how likely a Vegas-bound GOP might be. And according to All-Nevada Political Journalist Jon Ralston, it’s quite a serious bid indeed.

“Is there so much fear and loathing of Sin City that this move by Nevada’s GOP elite to secure the convention is more like the hallucinations of a Strip drunk at 3 AM than a sober proposition by a smart, committed group of people? I don’t think so,” Ralston wrote in a Ralston Reports post today.

Ralston points out that Vegas patriarchs such as Sheldon Adelson and Steve Wynn “will open their checkbooks for this” and the city’s experience with conventions and its inventory of hotel rooms would help grease the skids.

And for the record: Even though Roll Call After Dark has cued the Sin City jokes about what such a locale could wrought, it’s worth pointing out that same column extolled the virtues of having such a convention in a prime-time city like Vegas, as opposed to places like Denver, Colo., and Charlotte, N.C., where hotel rooms were sometimes more than hour away from the convention site and transportation systems were lacking. As for the adult entertainment angle, there’s a reason prostitution is referred to as the world’s oldest profession (because it’s everywhere), and last time we were in Tampa, another convention site, there was no real shortage of strip clubs there, either.

And why shouldn’t Vegas feel free to make a bid that places like Kansas City or Cleveland do? Ralston’s headline sums it up well: “GOP 2016 in Las Vegas? Why not?” That harks to one of the best political slogans of all time, from Kinky Friedman’s Texas gubernatorial bid: Why the hell not?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXfKNLUWzbw