Last Call For The Queen City, Uncrowned

The 2016 Republican National Convention will not be here in Cincinnati after all.

Cincinnati officials withdrew the city's bid to host the 2016 GOP convention because the U.S. Bank Arena does not meet the necessary specifications, the city's host committee announced on Thursday.

John Barrett, president and CEO of Western & Southern Financial Group and a leader of the effort to bring the convention to Cincinnati, said the Queen City was at a disadvantage in the GOP competition because of the arena.

"The site selection committee really liked what they saw here, but our arena is 40 years old," he told The Enquirer.

He said RNC officials gave Cincinnati leaders a 10-point list of items that would have to be improved or fixed at the arena for the city to remaining in the running—including doubling the number of box suites at the arena.

"We were able to do some of it but not all of it," Barrett said. "We're at a great disadvantage to these brand new modern arenas that have everything."

It's one thing to have a billionaire basketball or hockey team owner complain about the size of your arena, entirely another to have the GOP complain about it.  Maybe the problem is, oh, I dunno, Cincinnati doesn't have a major league hockey team like Columbus or NBA team like Cleveland. 

Considering no Republican has ever won the White House without carrying Ohio, scrapping one of the two remaining Ohio cities made some sense.  I just figured it would be Cleveland out.

Oh well.  It's not like I was looking forward to even more GOP jackasses around the city than normal.