I've covered the bad and the ugly; here it like to be as positive as possible. The crowd was beautiful, completely diverse despite being about 99% white. Otherwise, every shape, size, age, sex, and yes, class, represented, in a cheerful and co-operative mood, much like a party as opposed to Party. I was expecting tension, drama, and confrontation; didn't see any. One spunky older dame got up and told slightly blue jokes. Irony piling up against innocence and rolling over on sentiment and nostalgia. Wonderful. I wish I knew her, wife of some potentate, I assumed.
The candidates that spoke were mostly convincing and effective, with the exception of George Allen, who has exhausted his schtick after long use, and seems to running on inertia alone. He's too good, a brand now, and doesn't have to try very hard. Lost momentum, stuck in low orbit. The deja-vu would kill me; I would start to dislike and despise the muppets, make mistakes. He'll win the primary, though. Tall, good-looking rich guy with a famous father, proven success, a made man. Another "presumptive" nominee, God curse them all! Whoops, sorry; trying to be positive, but while I'm at it, two words I never heard mentioned were bush and romney. The dogs that didn't bark, as 'twere.
I'm a Bob Marshall "fan", for reasons I won't bore you with - essentially he's a real conservative, but he is actually effective, focused and committed, and has done some real good things; so naturally he is considered a potentially dangerous loose cannon by the insiders (the only one I actually know pronounced him "kind of a nut"; thus are a thousand campaigns scuttled) and won't be supported. The Senate is their sanctum sanctorum - "None shall enter with unbrowned lips". Possible exception, Rand Paul, that proves the rule.
I had never heard of or about E.W.Jackson before, but Wow. actually double wow after I found out more, but the speech easily won on style (off the charts) and content. The only person to mention the U.N., for instance. The insiders should be swarming this guy - marine, harvard law, businessman, minister (well-known evidently; one of the school employees who was talking to him in the parking lot asked him if he were known as "the bishop", which Jackson affirmed.) Talk about outreach. Black conservative influential church-goers; the remnant, natural small-r republicans. If Marshall weren't running, I'd back him, even if he turned out to be a neo-con tool. What's one more out of 98? Allen and the faceless Democrat, whose name escapes me for good reasons, are anyway, so what's to lose?
I talked a bit to Mr.Wear, before and after the vote. I said that I wished I had paid the full toll so I could vote for him, and after he seemed to listen to my concerns about the huge numbers of kids graduating into the current non-economy, and this could be easily tied into his ethnic (futile attempt, whoops again) outreach project. "A (for instance but not exclusively) young americanised asian engineer with a private-sector job is Republican; with a government job, a Democrat; unemployed, a libertarian, often a very effective libertarian." Plus they may be able to explain to their parents why they should take time out of their 14 hour workday to try to vote for someone to allow/help them to run their business and pay their taxes. A smart guy could put together some pieces to build the party. Another kind of smart guy could try to build the party by scaring the muppets some more, but even they must see that it's wearing thin.
That concludes the sunny part. If it keeps raining, I hope to outline opportunities. Short version - few.
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