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Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Plenty of red meat for GOP delegates
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Man, does Sue P. Everhart, chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, know how to recover from a canceled speaker.
When the scheduled speaker for the lunchtime gathering of delegates bailed last week at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, the state GOP recovered with this lineup:
U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss.
Former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer, who defeated incumbent Edwin Edwards and others to claim the governor’s office in 1988. While serving in the U.S. House of Representatives between 1981 and 1988, he was a Blue Dog Democrat. He switched parties in 1991. Edwards defeated him in 1991.
John R. Block of Illinois, who served as U.S. secretary of agriculture under Ronald Reagan between 1981 and 1986.
John McCain’s son, Andy.
Former New York Gov. George Pataki, who served three terms between 1995 and 2006.
Gov. John M. Huntsman Jr. of Utah, elected in 2004.
U.S. Secretary of Commerce Carlos M. Gutierrez, appointed by President Bush in 2004.
Former Iraq prisoner of war Warrant Officer Ron Young of Lithia Springs.
Former Vietnam prisoner of war Col. Lee Ellis of Cumming, whose plane was shot down over North Vietnam 11 days after McCain’s. He and McCain were prisoners at the infamous “Hanoi Hilton” camp.
Wow! Not surprisingly, Georgia’s Secretary of State Karen Handel, who was also scheduled to speak, opted to take her shot at delegates’ attention on another day.
Some really good lines and stories came out of it, red meat for the delegates. Huntsman, who served as an advance man for Ronald Reagan, avowed that “any state that can be run by a guy named Sonny obviously has to have a positive outlook on life.”
On 9/11, he said, he was a trade official visiting Vietnam. While there he went to the Hanoi Hilton and saw the flight suit McCain had worn when he was shot down.
“When freedom is taken away from some people I believe they are in a little better position to preserve it for the next generation,” said Huntsman.
Gutierrez, a native of Cuba, was the low-key speaker of the day. He said of Barack Obama, “he has been in Congress for a short period of time and half of that time has been spent campaigning.”
Of Obama’s thin resume, Gutierrez said: “Tell me what you have done and I will know what you are going to do.”
(Vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin later told the full convention that listening to Obama speak, it’s easy to forget this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform.)
Former New York Gov. Pataki told the Georgia delegates that Obama had picked the “ultimate Washington insider,” Sen. Joseph Biden, who’s best known “for the length of his speeches.”
Of the accusations that Palin’s inexperienced, Pataki countered: “I learned more about how to run a government in one month as a governor than I did in 10 years as a legislator.” Neither Obama nor Biden, or for that matter McCain, has executive experience.
Ellis, a POW with McCain, described him as “tough as a knot.” McCain declined release because the code of POWs was that the sick and wounded be set free first and then they would go in the order of capture.
Obama, said Chambliss, is “the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate —- that is, when he decides he wants to vote.”
Andy McCain said of his father that “he’s pretty tough. Growing up with him, you did it his way.” The elder McCain is “arguably one of the funniest guys I’ve ever met,” with a keen sense of humor, he said. He wants his grandchildren to call him “the old geezer.”
While he “disagrees with everybody at some point,” the son said his father had told him repeatedly: “I will never make a decision where I won’t put the country first.”
Red meat for the partisans? Sure. But with the back-up entertainment, nobody bothered to ask who’d canceled.
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