To be brutally honest, I was not going to vote for McCain anyway. I knew I was not going to be swayed by anyone, or anything today. However, I simply wanted to listen and learn why people support John McCain.
Similar to when I saw John Edwards and Mitt Romney in New Hampshire last year, I kept my mouth closed and my ears open. In June, I saw Barack Obama, and there I asked more questions, and was more open. But today, I was going to be careful. I wanted my pictures, and I wanted to get a feel. of the crowd and movement behind Palin and John McCain.
I was out the door at 6:30 this morning. Fate seemed to shine upon me (though the skies were overcast) and I managed to hit multiple green lights (in Rush Hour) on my way to the location. The venue was a small part in Fairfax, Virginia. The location was a small amphitheater. I got there shortly after 7am, and parked two blocks away and made my way to the venue. Doors were supposed to open at 7, but then changed to 8am. This means, I had to contend with “the line.” This time the line was very VERY different than t he Obama line in June. First, the vast majority of the line were Caucasian. Even in Northern Virginia, we have a lot of diversity, however, this line was not it. In front of me where a group of older couples, lamenting the days of Regan and how the Democrats “got us into this mess.” They derided Obama, called him a lunatic and were excited about Palin. The women in the group were especially taken with her. One woman exclaimed “I told my feminist friends that the GOP was pro-woman, and now I showed them!"
The woman directly behind me was much quieter. She was a retiree, whose husband was working in the Pentagon on 9/11. “He called me saying that he was ok, but he was being evacuated t o an undisclosed location.” She recalled to me. It is a stark reminder that to many people, 9/11 is very personal and still front and center in their minds.
She was excited to be there, excited to see Palin, and kept worrying about not seeing any of her friends, “Maybe I have more Democratic friends than I thought.” She mumbled to herself. I told her the line was long, and we are towards the front, so we could have just missed them. Her friend went to park the car, so she was searching for her as well.
There was a large group behind us, from a small town in Woodstock, VA. They were in their 30’s, and again, very negative towards Obama, very positive towards Palin. One very loud woman said proudly, “My sister is a liberal, and I told her to leave the country, because we don’t need liberals here anymore.” Joy Several GOP candidates for congress came through the line. As well as a Phone Bank Bomb. What happens is that everyone (not me though) received a paper with two names on it. During the rally, they were supposed to call these people and get them to support McCain.
Then, it got interesting. A group of 20-30 Obama supporters came by and started chanting. The line was livid. They were spat at, called cowards, and chants of USA, USA, USA kept blaring over and over. One amusing line they had was “Have a Brain, Vote McCain.” The friend of the woman behind me showed up and started screaming at them. Yelling, “Obama wants to abort 40 million babies in his first term.” She wailed over and over on this. When the ruckus died down, I said to her, “I don’t think he wants to abort babies.” The woman was kinda shocked I said that, “He wants to abort as many Republicans as possible to keep a Liberal Majority. He would abort Bristol’s baby if he could. He will force abortions on every Republican woman in this nation if he is president!”
I didn’t argue, I knew it would be hopeless. The quiet woman apologized to me later, “She can be a little extreme, but we need her to vote, so I am ok with it.”
I considered leaving… but, I stayed.
The line moved, went through security (though their security was more lax than Obama’s in June) and I made my way to the stage. By some miracle, I got to about 20 feet from the stage. No small feat. The next 90 minutes was an exercise in endurance. “Obama will destroy our country”, “Obama is what is wrong with Washington.””McCain will clean up the corruption!” “Joe Biden has been in the Senate for 24 years, and what has he done?”
My legs also started hurting.
Interspersed with this was the claim that Obama hated women, and how sexist he was, and how horrible he is towards women. I heard a rather redneck fella say in one breath, “Obama hates women” followed by, “Damn, I would FUCK Sarah Palin silly!”
I found the disconnect very apparent. VPILF craze was rampant with the men in their 20’s-50’s. The open lust for her, calling her a hot piece, and commenting on how good “her mooserack” was (Don’t ask, I didn’t get it either) was juxtaposed with their claims of sexism in the Democratic party. “Obama said, put lipstick on a Pig, and it is still a Pig, How DARE he say that! How sexist!”
Another thing I noticed was this was a Palin crowd. This was not a McCain crowd. People came to see her, not for John McCain. Rumors started going around that she wasn’t coming, and people started to get pissed. I was surprised. You are supposed to like Number One more than Number Two., right?
The Rally finally got started, and they had Tom Davis MC the event, followed by a Latino business owner supporting McCain for the Tax breaks (her family business is filtering out cooking oil from fast food places and reselling it, and making biofuel.).This was followed by a feminist Hillary Supporter who is now for McCain. She claimed, “There has never been a woman on paper money! (True) or on a coin for legal tender for that matter! (False: Susan B. Anthony, and Sacajawea).” I mumbled to myself, “I guess Susan B. Anthony doesn’t count anymore.” And a couple of people laughed around me.
One of the people who laughed spoke to me for a bit. He seemed quiet and down to earth. I asked him if Palin was the what McCain needed. He said, “She will get him votes, but I don’t like her too much.” I asked why? He said, “Being a good soldier means agreeing with the end result, and not how you got there.” He looked square at me, and I nodded.
What could I say? In the middle of a GOP love fest?
“You know, it doesn’t have to be this way though.”I responded.
“For now, it does.” He replied.
Then came Frank Wolf who spoke very briefly, to make way for the triumphant entrance of surprise guest Fred Thompson. I say triumphant because the inspiring song from Forrest Gump came up. Fred gave his attack dog speech. (I won’t go into details because little of it was new) and the crowd loved it.
The main event was predictable. Entering with the song “Eye of the Tiger” (after an encore of the Forrest Gump song) Sarah Palin and John McCain used the same speech they have given for the last week. Also in attendance was Cindi McCain and Todd Palin. I mainly took pictures during this time. I am not really going to go over their speech since it was basically the GOP convention speech pared down. She gave that famously awful untruthful line, “On that Bridge to Nowhere, I told Congress, Thanks but no thanks! If we want the bridge, we would do it ourselves.”
She touted the Alaksan budget surplus, to my inner monologue replying, “Yeah, because you still get enough earmarks from the Federal Government to pay for darn near everything, I guess it is pretty easy to run a surplus then.”
The only other thing I will say is that it still feels like McCain is babysitting Palin. She should be out on her own by now, why is she still with McCain? His interactions with her are still awkward, and seeing it in person makes it even harder to watch. Of course the crowd was too busy cheering. But their chemistry is lacking.
Afterwards, I made the slow walk out of there. I felt alone, in a sea of an estimated 20,000 people, I felt alone. I didn’t feel apart of a larger movement. Maybe it is because I don’t support McCain to begin with, so I didn’t feel the camaraderie, but I can’t imagine an undecided walking away with a positive feeling after the things I heard today from McCain/Palin supporters.
The hate I heard was not lost on me. When I saw Obama, the mood was different. They didn’t speak about McCain, they spoke about our future, and about what we need to do. I remember the pride of Obama winning. I don’t recall the viciousness of what I heard today. I didn’t hear specifics, I heard “Lets clean up Washington!” “Let’s reform Washington.” But I never got a real plan on how (Other than McCain Vetoing the first bill that comes across his desk.) For all the flack Obama got for not talking specifics, it is the GOP I found employing broad generalities.
Here is a link to my Photos from today. I need to upload more.
They are being fleeced along with the rest of us, but prefer to stick their heads in the sand and pretend they've been doing the right thing rather than face the terrifying prospect that they've been horribly wrong.
They have so very much in common with jihadists and theocrats. So much in common with 18th and 19th century Puritans and Calvinists. Everything must be black & white because it is easier to control the masses through fallacious binary mentality.
Disgusting hypocrisy is my own reaction, but sadly, exactly what we can expect.
Besides, for all of their crying about it, white angry voters are the strongest identity politics block. As long as they believe it is one of them, they will support them. And to pass for one of them, all what you have to do is hold a bible on one hand and a gun on the other.
I was so astounded that I got out a piece of paper and wrote down what he said. He seemed so sure, it almost made me want to believe that George W. Bush wasn't the absolute imbecile I feared he was.
I always wondered if Fred was embarrassed he said this...
You noted the lust for Palin; sex and power are closely linked, especially in the big money crowd (or the crowd that worships big money). We are well on our way to being turned into a banana republic with our own Eva Peron. Some normal people hope this Palin-mania will slack off, but I doubt it, and, if it does, Rove will find a way to re-ignite the fires. I, too, noticed that the crowd was over 99.5 percent Caucasian, and I suspect they themselves did, too... and gloried in it. I hope the Democrats drop their naive belief in rational discussion of issues and turn loose a few bullies of their own if no other reason than to protect the innocent from the coming explosion of rage.
Even today, we have a scandal that's broken within the Interior Department in connection with the Minerals Management Service. The person who oversaw the division is a Bush political appointee -- her husband was, until last month -- the head of the Office and Management Budget's procurements division (another Bush appointee).
You won't hear about this details of this investigation on Fox News -- or from the GOP delegation. This is yet another big scandal that's happened on the GOP's watch with only a handful of bad apples actually facing prosecution.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09...
Bob Altmeyer's book "The Authoritarians" is a pretty accurate description of what the GOP has become -- and the mindset of those that the party seems to attract.
Secondly, we are seeing the last stand of the angry white person. They want to turn the clock back to when everyone knew white people were better than anyone else.
So there is a bright side to any outcome on this one. First, if McCain wins then all the stuff that's been held together with duck tape and baling wire will just fall apart under a Republican administration, and McCain will just wait for the market to fix things.
If Obama wins, he will get a change to enact some good legislation to fux things, but on the other hand the whities may get so angry that they become the new terrorists. There will be things to like and not like no matter what happens.
No one can help these angry white people. One day they will be in the minority and then they will know what all the rest of us have felt like over the centuries. Except I hope the people of color can show them how to act like real Christians.
She raised spending by a significant amount, the difference being that in a state you have to balance your budget, you can't really on the full faith and credit of the US government to write checks you don't have the funds for.
The reason she's popular in Alaska is she's a big tax and spend gal. But the McCain camp just invents another picture of her that meshes with his maverickyness and then states the non sequitur fact that she's popular. Well, yes, but not for trying to bring in fewer federal funds. For spending and taxing big corporations.
She needs to be attacked vigorously if we want to win. I don't know that the Obama campaign has it in themselves to do so.
The hypocrisy of, out of one side of his mouth, stating that the times are too dangerous to trust a relatively new person on the scene (someone that won the nomination of the largest political party in the country with nearly 20 million votes, largely on his judgment in being against the Iraq war before it began when such a stance was not politically popular), and then, out of the other side, stating that there is nothing hypocritical about selecting a patently unqualified person for the same position is outrageous and insulting.
They need to take her down loudly and forcefully, and then pivot to the main point -- McCain's campaign is causing distractions in order to try and get everyone to forget his record of enabling Bush. Obama and Biden need to show some righteous anger at the utter contempt McCain has shown the country with this selection. The press will pay attention. And then hit the main points about McCain/Bush.
Mccain wins if he talks personality?
Is that code for Black folk? (as In "I will never vote for one of them!"}
Lets call it right now. Racism is alive and well in the USA
and if you dont realize it yet, you will by november.
I will remind all that racists get a vote too.
that is the sad, but true truth.
"My sister is a liberal, and I told her to leave the country, because we don't need liberals here anymore."seriously?