Yesterday’s Tea Party Express event in Concord, N.H., featured every possible perspective on Mitt Romney. Because of connectivity issues, I only uploaded the photos last night. Now here come the videos, beginning with freshman Republican state Rep. Susan DeLemus, who is definitely anti-Romney:
Gov. Mitt Romney was visibly fired up tonight at a Tea Party rally in Concord, N.H., where he continued his veiled swipes at Texas Gov. Rick Perry.
“Of the people running for president there aren’t many who have less years in government than me,” Romney said. “I served four years as governor but I joke I didn’t inhale.”
Repeating a line he’s used all week Romney said, “Career politicians got us into this and they don’t know how to get us out … I’m a business guy.”
“The issue with Romney is the issues,” says Jackie Bodnar, spokeswoman for FreedomWorks, the group that quit the TPX tour to protest Romney. She hands me the three pages of fliers and oppo research that everyone will be getting as they show up, with granular details about the taxes and fees and un-Tea Party things Gov. Mitt Romney supported in the ‘Aughts.
Peg Coutermarsh was one of the first to arrive. She wears a shirt with the date January 19, 2013 on it — Obama’s last day in office, if he loses — and holds a flagpole that has been signed by famous Tea Party speakers. Hermain Cain has signed it. She doesn’t want Romney to sign it.
“I’m going to support a Tea Party candidate,” she says. “Romney represents the same old, same old.”
Is she swayed at all by the polls that show Romney beating Barack Obama?
“If you read into who was polled, they were all Romney people.”
The press conference starts at 5:30, sharp. There are two dozen protesters and around 30 reporters scribbling down what they say. Andrew Hemingway, wearing a Join-or-Die T-shirt, speaks into a microphone, his anti-Mitt jeremiad radiating from a small grey amp.
“Did you know that 50,000 people fled Massachusetts because of Mitt Romney, fled to the free state of New Hampshire?” asks Hemingway. “For him to say, in a recent Politico article, that a lot of Tea Party people in New Hampshire like him? I say he’s drinking the wrong Kool Aid.”
Jerry DeLemus, chairman of Granite State Patriots, warns us that Romney is about to commit fraud, getting the media to take pictures of him in front of a “Tea Party” banner and pronounce him acceptable.
“A photo-op is just that,” he says. “I can take a picture of myself in front of the Supreme Court. That does not make me a Supreme Court justice!”
UPDATE V: The first few photos at the top were uploaded while we were still at Rollins Park, where I was poaching WiFi from the Tea Party Express. Several people — including Weigel and Andrea Shea King — thought it was amusing to see me working on the grass and shot some photos:
Both Da Tech Guy and I have more photos, videos, etc., to get online, but Sarah Palin’s due in Manchester at noon Tuesday, so we’re going to have to shut down the National Affairs Desk here in Concord and get back on the road.
UPDATE VI: We’re at the hotel in Manchester where the Tea Party Express crew is staying. Pete’s uploading video and telling stories of his travels. Meanwhile, Don Surber writes:
What does compute is that as the lone New Englander in the race, Romney must win New Hampshire. And how does he go about that? By sucking up to the party brass? By showing everyone how centrist and electable he is? By using the 2008 plan?
No, he is asking the Tea Party for help. Far from being the extremists who will turn off middle America, the Tea Party is middle America.
CONCORD, N.H. — More than 25 protesters turned out before a Tea Party Express rally this evening to protest not President Obama, but Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
“We do not need leadership that puts their finger up, sees which way the wind’s blowing and then all of a sudden changes their mind and goes back in that direction,” Tim Carter, a leader of the Lakes Region Tea Party in New Hampshire. “If you look at Mitt’s past voting record, I think that’s what you’re going to see.” . . .
The FreedomWorks rally was held before the larger Tea Party Express rally, where Romney was scheduled to speak. FreedomWorks had been active with the Tea Party Express, but pulled its staff member off the Express bus to protest Romney’s inclusion in today’s event. After holding the anti-Romney rally, it urged participants to join the Express event, held in the same place.
The Tea Party Express tour, which is crossing the country in the lead-up to a Tea Party-sponsored Sept. 12 presidential debate, invited all Republican presidential candidates to speak at rallies along the route. With the entrance of Texas Governor Rick Perry into the presidential race, Romney has showed signs that he will be reaching out more to Tea Party activists.
It was dangerous lunacy, but it was also the kind of thing a real connoisseur of edge-work could make an argument for… Separately, we might pull it off. But together, no — we would blow it. Too much aggressive chemistry in that mix; the temptation to run a deliberate freakout would be too heavy.
When the going gets weird, the weird go to New Hampshire.
Mitt Romney’s keynote speech Sunday night at a Tea Party Express rally in Concord, N.H., was perhaps more notable for what did not happen — there were no fiery clashes with Tea Party protesters, or angry hecklers — than for what did — Mr. Romney delivered a lively version of his standard stump speech.
The civility of the Tea Party was, or at least should be, the big story of this event, as Da Tech Guy has been saying all night. Here’s Pete’s video where he asks a question of Romney and then of Romney’s finance director Ron Kaufman:
“In the course of this apparently endless campaign, I have set up the National Affairs Desk in some of the worst hotels, motels and other foul commercial lodging establishments in the western world. Politicians, journalists, and traveling salesmen seem to gravitate to these places – for reasons I’d rather not think about, right now – but the Wayfarer is a rare and constant exception. The one that proves the rule, perhaps . . . but, for whatever reason, it is one of my favorite places: a rambling, woodsy barracks with big rooms, good food, full ice machines, and . . . yes . . . a brief history of pleasant memories.”
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72
MANCHESTER, N.H.
We left Worcester, Mass., about noon and hooked a left onto Route 13 North through Townsend toward the New Hampshire state line at Brookline. Da Tech Guy’s big Buick Le Sabre is a big car for such a small road. North of Townsend, Route 13 is a lumpy two-lane running through the forest, and the first thing you notice when you cross into New Hampshire is the higher-quality of highway pavement. No more of those rutted and badly patched Massachusetts roads here.
Unlike Iowa, where Council Bluffs is 130 miles from Des Moines, New Hampshire is a small state and the distances are short. After crossing the border, we drive about 10 miles, hang a right onto Route 101 East, and then it’s about 15 miles to Manchester. So the total drive time from Worcester to Manchester is barely 40 minutes, although I’m sure we could have trimmed that time considerably if Pete had let me drive the Buick, which has a powerful V-8 that could have us rocketing along at 90 mph, were I behind the wheel. (And we haven’t seen a New Hampshire State Trooper yet. “Live Free or Die” is a motto incompatible with rigorous enforcement of speed limits.)
New Hampshire state legislators are paid just $100 a year, the legislature only meets part-time and there is no state income tax. By contrast, Massachusetts state legislators make $50,000 a year, the legislature meets year-round and the state income taxes are so high that there is a continuous out-migration of fed-up residents moving to neighboring New Hampshire. Unfortunately (and perversely), the immigrants from “Taxachusetts” often bring with them to the Granite State the same liberal values and Democrat political loyalties that have made the Bay State increasingly unlivable.
We arrived in Manchester and drove directly to Herman Cain’s New Hampshire campaign headquarters on Lowell Street. Nobody was in the office, but there was a note on the door: “If locked call 570-604-0809 for Cain info.” No problem. Right across from Cain HQ is the world-famous Red Arrow Diner, visited by every presidential candidate in recent memory.
From here, we were due to push on to Concord, where Mitt Romney is scheduled to headline a 6 p.m. rally at Rollins Park. En route, however, I wanted to stop by a famous local landmark. But when we got to 121 South River Street . . .
Alas, the Wayfarer Inn — that “rare and constant exception” to the western world’s “foul commercial lodging establishments” — is no more. It was boarded up and surrounded by a chain-link fence, parts of it covered in graffiti. I did, however, manage to get a photo of the main entrance, site of one of the most hilarious scenes in Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72.
Somewhere, I’m sure, Frank Mankiewicz was still hiding in the shrubbery, waiting to waylay innocent journalists. So we moved on . . .
Yes, I’m filing this from the Playland of a McDonald’s up the road from the Wayfarer. There’s probably a metaphor in this, but no time to think about it now. Next stop, Concord.
For her part, Palin may factor in Perry’s standing in her own decision-making process. . . .
If she opts to run, it will be because she hasn’t heard what she believes she needs to in the upcoming debates, and/or doesn’t trust Perry to bear the standard.
Read the whole thing, because Dan has put his finger directly on something I had previously remarked in passing: Palin has specified September as her deadline for making a decision, and there are three debates in September — Wednesday at the Reagan Library in California, Sept. 12 in Tampa and Sept. 22 in Orlando. If Perry underperforms in those debates, Palin may see the front-runner’s weakness as an invitation to enter the race.
MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) — He may have been 2,000 miles from the border, but Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry’s immigration record in Texas quickly became the focus in New Hampshire Saturday afternoon.
Speaking to hundreds of Granite State voters at a private reception, the Texas governor was asked whether he supported a fence along the Mexican border. “No, I don’t support a fence on the border,” he said, while referring to the long border in Texas alone. “The fact is, it’s 1,200 miles from Brownsville to El Paso. Two things: How long you think it would take to build that? And then if you build a 30-foot wall from El Paso to Brownsville, the 35-foot ladder business gets real good.”
Instead, Perry said he supported “strategic fencing” and National Guard troops to prevent illegal immigration and violence from Mexican drug cartels.
By the time you read this, Da Tech Guy and I will be in New Hampshire, where Mitt Romney’s appearance at a 6 p.m. Tea Party Express rally in Concord is expected to draw a big crowd, including many angry Tea Party protesters.
Pete’s got me linked up. He’ll be my host for the next few days, so you probably want to go hit his tip jar for having to put up with me. Tomorrow: New Hampshire.
UNION STATION, Washington, D.C.
My son-in-law dropped me off here about 1 a.m. My train leaves at 3:15 a.m. So I’ve got a few minutes to do a quick blog post before I board the train and head off to Worcester and thence to New Hampshire.
As former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin walked in the front door of The Machine Shed restaurant in Urbandale, Iowa, this evening, a reporter asked Palin what she thought about the current field of GOP presidential candidates.
“Happy with the field of candidates. I always think that there’s room for more, though, because spirited debate and more competition will allow an even better discourse and a more rigorous discourse that the public deserves,” Palin said.
So, yeah, she’s not ruling anything out. Just keepin’ everybody on their toes. You betcha.
This station is spooky in the wee hours. Dark and quiet. Here’s video:
The AmTrak ticket from Union Station in D.C. to Worcester, Mass., was $182. My son-in-law is coming to pick me up in a few minutes to take me to the station. Pete Da Tech Guy will pick me up Saturday afternoon in Worcester.
FreedomWorks, which had been participating in the Tea Party Express’s tour and had helped turn out activists at rallies during prior stops, decided it could no longer be affiliated with the tour, said Brendan Steinhauser, a lead organizer for FreedomWorks.
Instead, it began working with local New Hampshire tea party groups to organize a counter rally set for about the same time in the same park in Concord as Romney’s speech.
“We have to defend our brand against poseurs,” Steinhauser said.
What fun that should be, huh? And then Monday, there is a rally in Manchester, N.H., with Sarah Palin, fresh off the Saturday Tea Party Rally in Iowa where all the experts sure she’s not — repeat, not — going to announce her presidential candidacy. Will Palin do what the experts expect her to do Saturday? Well, first time for everything, I guess. But if she does announce in Iowa, we’ll be ready to cover her first campaign trip to New Hampshire. Speaking of women and controversy . . .
Mrs. Other McCain is kinda angry at me. You see, when I blogged Wednesday morning about my plans for a New Hampshire trip, I meant to tell her about. But then stuff kept happening on the blogosphere, and I got busy and forgot to mention it until this evening, after I’d already bought my train ticket.
Contributions to the “Help Make Mrs. Other McCain Happy” Fund would be deeply appreciated. She’s a wonderful wife, who has to put up with an awful lot. Now it’s time to pack up and get rolling — wish me luck!
So do not worry and say, ‘What are we to eat?’ or ‘What are we to drink?’ or ‘What are we to wear?’ All these things the pagans seek. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom (of God) and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides. Matthew 6:31-33
With bills piling up here at home, I’d been wondering how I was going to fund further travels from the Shoe Leather Fund. How could I expect the tip-jar hitters, who gave so generously for my “Fear and Loathing in Iowa” trip to hit the tip jar again in September, when I hadn’t even been able to find time to thank them for what they’d already given in August?
Then that video got hijacked– what an amazing blessing in disguise. And if readers don’t mind, I hope some of the newly-created “Legal Defense Fund” can be applied to buy a train ticket to Boston.
A one-way AmTrak ticket from D.C. to Boston is $162, and I’m sure my buddy Pete will pick me up at the Boston train station and be eager to join me on a trip to cover Governor Palin in New Hampshire. How I’ll get from there down to Florida for the debate in Tampa on Sept. 12 . . .
