If only I didn't have to work for a living, I'd have attended more
rallies! Most of them were at impossible times/locations for me. But
I did get to a recent Sarah Palin rally. Even though I don't agree
with her politics, it isn't every day that a woman runs for high
office, so I was pleased to be able to attend her rally with my
mother-in-law. (We invited Emma but she said she had seen enough
rallies.)
Most bizarre: the directions to the rally that I printed from
johnmccain.com were VERY wrong. We got lost twice by following the
directions. First, a crucial turn was not indicated. Once we sorted
that out, we dutifully followed the rest of the directions as they led
us several streets into a gigantic housing development, finally
directing us to drive for 15 mins. around "Owenshire Circle" which was,
as you might guess from the name, a not-very-long street that just
traveled around in a circle past lots of lookalike houses. Very
confusing. My map in the car was too old to show the housing
development we were in, so we pulled over while I phoned my husband and
asked him to get me better directions, and we watched lots of
McCain/Palin bumper stickers caravan past us and turn down the same
dead end.
Eventually, a gigantic shiny red pickup pulled up next to me with two nice ladies in it; they asked if we were trying to get to the Palin rally (how could they tell??) and said, "Follow us!" And they got us there. "How could this happen?" I asked my MIL . . . "screwing up directions is something I'd expect the DEMOCRATS to do." She said, only half-joking, "I think a Democrat must have hacked into the website." But really, the problem is sure to lie with whatever online map service the campaign had linked to.
Most exciting: The rally included a broad roster of Republican
political stars: Palin, Gov. Charlie Crist, Sen. Mel Martinez,
Elizabeth Hasselbeck, and Sean Hannity (tho Sean did not take the
stage--he just signed autographs--which puzzles me. Why have such star
power at a rally if you aren't going to use it?)
Most
surprising: Despite the presence of the A list at this Sunday afternoon
event, the arena was not full. I saw a newspaper report that about
9000 were there, but the arena has only 8300 seats and those were only
about 60% full. The crowd on the floor didn't look anything like 3000
people to me. The low attendance was sharply contrasted by a
Clinton/Obama rally a few weeks later, held at midnight on a weeknight,
outside the same arena, which was attended by 35,000 people. Maybe with better online directions, the arena would have had more people in it.
A surprise: Sarah Palin got bigger cheers than McCain. Of course, he wasn't there, but still.
The facilities were quite nice: air-conditioned, plenty of comfy seats, concession stands open. Much more pleasant than the Clinton rally. OTOH, the sound quality was LOUSY. I could barely understand Hasselbeck, who talked so fast she might have been a chipmunk, and Palin's speech was also very hard to hear, and there was no jumbo-tron which would have helped us decipher what she was trying to say. The ladies room had better sound quality than my seat. From what I could hear, many Republican cheer lines weren't much different than the Dem lines. Help the middle class. Go USA. etc. Though we also heard plenty of Joe the Plumber, drill baby drill, etc. No ugly shouts of "kill him," "terrorist," etc.
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