Sarah Palin excites huge Florida crowd

LADY LAKE, Fla. — In the biggest event of the 2008 campaign in Florida so far, Sarah Palin drew tens of thousands of people Sunday to a Central Florida town square decked out like the Fourth of July for a speech aimed at pumping up the state’s Republican heartland.

Palin focused her speech on her track record as governor of Alaska, John McCain’s experience in wartime, and did not delve into the nitty-gritty of the ailing economy. That suited several people in the crowd who said they didn’t come to hear bullet points but the governor who rejuvenated the ticket.

“She’s the sunrise, not the sunset,” said Linda Cusumano, 57, of Orlando. “She makes me feel there’s nothing we can’t do.”

The crowd endured hours in the sweltering heat for the sight of the dynamic newcomer to national politics. A new Miami Herald/St. Petersburg Times/Bay News 9 poll showed that 40 percent of voters who back McCain said Palin made them feel stronger about their choice.

Juxtaposed with feel-good appeals to patriotism, Palin delivered some tough blows to Obama, accusing him of sitting on the sideline during the current economic crisis. The governor of Alaska also said he was blocking the nation’s path to energy independence.

“Maybe if he’d been the governor of an energy-rich state, he’d get it,” said Palin, an advocate of offshore oil drilling. “Maybe if he’d been on the front lines of securing our nation’s energy independence, he’d understand.”

Obama has suggested he might be willing to support limited offshore drilling but only as part of comprehensive legislation that focuses more on investing in alternative energy sources.

Campaigning in Charlotte, N.C., on Sunday, Obama repeated the message he brought last week to Miami, Daytona Beach and Jacksonville: the Bush administration is to blame for the economic turmoil, and McCain promises more of the same.

“We’re now seeing the disastrous consequences of this philosophy all around us, on Wall Street as well as Main Street,” he said, according to The Associated Press. “Yet Senator McCain, who candidly admitted not long ago that he doesn’t know as much about economics as he should, wants to keep going down the same disastrous path.”

Crowd much larger than expected

Palin made her Florida debut in The Villages, one of the fastest-growing retirement communities in the country and a treasure trove of Republican voters. President Bush put it on the map when he campaigned here in the homestretch of the 2004 campaign.

But Palin drew thousands more than the estimated 20,000 people that turned out for Bush. A fire rescue official estimated the crowd at 25,000 to 30,000, while the Republican Party of Florida pegged the audience at twice that size.

“The South is Palin Country,” read a banner trailing from a plane overhead. The Spanish moss-covered trees in the area made it feel more southern than South Florida.

Palin promised McCain would “get our economy back on track,” but the only specific she offered was “better regulation” on Wall Street.

Most of Palin’s 23-minute speech centered on trying to tear down Obama as a do-nothing tax-and-spender and build up John McCain as a reform-minded military hero.

“At a decisive moment in the course of the war in Iraq, John McCain fought for the strategy, the surge, that has brought victory within sight,” said Palin, whose son left for Iraq earlier this month. “As the mother of one of those troops, that is exactly the kind of man I want as commander in chief. John McCain is the only great man in this race.”

Soft talk about family

Her jabs at the Democratic nominee were offset with softer talk about her family. She noted that her two youngest daughters went to Disney World over the weekend, bragged about her husband’s snowmobiling prowess and described the joy of her infant son, who was born with Down syndrome. She vowed to “strengthen” the National Institutes of Health to speed the search for treatments and cures for chronic diseases.

Palin arrived in Orlando on Friday night but stayed behind closed doors until the Sunday rally. Campaign advisors said she was spending time with her family and preparing for her Oct. 2 debate against Democrat Joe Biden.

Obama will be in Tampa this week prepping for his debate Friday against McCain, the first of three showdowns between the two nominees. Obama is likely to make a campaign appearance while in the nation’s largest battleground state, where polls show a tight race.

Hours before Palin was scheduled to speak Sunday, traffic was backed up for blocks. People came on foot, by car — and, this being a retirement community — by golf cart.

Many wore red, white and blue, with tiny American flags perched in their Panama hats and visors. The hottest commodity other than the “Pitbulls for Palin” T-shirts were the handheld fans made by AARP. Despite that, dozens of people were treated for heat exhaustion.

In the town square, turkey legs and soft serve ice cream were for sale. A country music band warmed up the crowd, and in an homage to offshore oil drilling, played a song that declared, “Drill here, drill now.”

Palin is scheduled to return to Florida on Oct. 6 for fundraisers in Palm Beach, Naples and Jacksonville.