Bouncing Blog

By Chris Saxman | Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 | Catch-All

All the talk of boucing is important but misses a lot of what happens at these things.

Load the bus at 4pm for a 6:30 start of the session….Lots of walking. tons of stair climbing. constantly have to show ID. concessions were open yesterday – all the workers are beyond nice. State theme is Minnesota Nice. and they are. the pork sandwich? a little dry – they should stick to camp style walleye and leave the pork to folks who know how to BBQ.

Great event overall and will get to speeches shortly.

Sightings – Reporters – Mort Kondracke (shorter than expected), Howard Fineman, Andrea Mitchell – she spent her time trying to find Ron Paul delegates to interview. Mrs. Greenspan (Andrea), how about going over to the VIP section and interviewing the dozen plus POWs who served with McCain or the 5 Medal of Honor winners? I would imagine that they have very interesting stories of defending freedom of the press. Rich Galen of Mullings. what a nice guy. Senators Olympia Snowe and Mel Martinez sitting next to Va delegation. Miss Minnesota. George and Barbara Bush – awesome people. Did I mention Miss Minnesota?

Meetings – Marco Rubio -Speaker of Florida House. Bookmark him – future leader – national level. Had dinner with him at GOPAC – policy guy through and through. Gov. Tim Pawlenty who apologized for not finishing his breakfast at GOPAC before his speech and also apologized for speaking too long. I replied “i wasnt able to hear all of it anyway”. He’s also a policy wonk. True reformer. Nice as the people he represents.

Met Jon Voight and Kevin Farley (Chris’s brother) who are promoting the David Zucker film “An American Carol”. Got Voight to bite my pencil (take that Costanza!). Frank Luntz gave a great talk at breakfast after Gov. Gilmore called out Gov. Warner on the Card Check legislation that basically ends secret balloting in organizing unions. The assault on Right to Work Laws in Virginia continues!
LG Bolling did a great job stretching the breakfast as we waited for Voight and Farley with a rendition of “Little Brown Shack”. Luntz was critical of the hotel the Va delegation is staying in but it is fine.

Last night. Speeches and tributes.
Nicely done on tributes to former GOP electeds/notables who passed this year. the tribute that stopped everyone, rightfully so, was the one to Petty Officer Michael Monsoor a Navy SEAL who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for throwing himself on a grenade in Sept 2006 thus saving several fellow SEALs. His sister was there and the ovation for her was moving. The Hanoi Hilton POWs and Medal of Honor winners were also paid tribute to rousing standing ovations that lasted until Orson Swindle, himself a Hanoi POW, got us back on schedule. Whoever made a time allotment for that speech will not make that mistake again. Powerful moments.

Short phrase summations of some great speeches last night.

Laura Bush – classy lady. We’ll miss you.

President Bush – doing his job. History will be kinder than the American media/left.

Fred Thompson. Best speech. Moving tribute to McCain with humor and stark contrasts to Obama.
A year earlier?

Joe Lieberman. Statesman. Spoke the truth. Country First. Michael Moore’s favorite Democrat line was great!

Will report back from the Convention upon arrival…time to work out and then head over!

Chris

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