POSTING #135

Where's Newt?

It was 3.00 PM, on Tuesday, January 24th,  and Pat and I were sitting in lawn chairs under a tree in front of the bandstand in Cambier Park, in Naples, Florida.

The temperature was 27C (80F) and there was a pleasant breeze. We settled into our chairs as we waited for a Newt Gingrich rally to start---it was supposed to start at 5 PM.

A rally for Newt Gingrich?

Why, you might ask, would we be using part of our winter holiday to attend a rally for an American politician famous (infamous?) for three marriages and assorted scandals.

Good question.

Part of the answer is that I love all politics but especially the American brand, a love that Pat has come to share, or at least tolerate.

We had been checking the local media to see whether there would any rallies while we were in Florida. We found that most campaigning is now done through television debates and  (generally negative) ads.

Finally we found a rally---one for Newt.

Now, as his opponents keep saying, Newt has more baggage than an airline, but he's a colourful, unpredictable character full of ideas. I had heard him speak in Hilton Head a few years ago at a non-political symposium on health care. Newt showed a good understanding of the complexities of health care, and he had what I thought were some sensible ideas, including the necessity of a mandate, a requirement that all persons purchase health insurance. He has since flip-flopped on that idea, but that's politics for you. It would be unfair to hold that against him.

So, there we were, waiting for Newt.

We had no idea how many people would show up but decided to get to the Park two hours early to try to get a good location.

There were about three hundred people already there when we arrived, but we were able to set up our chairs about a hundred feet from the stage. Excellent location!

This was the scene at 3.30---our chairs were just to the right of the tree trunk. If you look really carefully you can see Pat's ankle and shoe at the extreme right of the photo.

We watched as people streamed into the park from all directions. A Newt supporter behind us said with glee that there were now 600 people, while Mitt Romney, who had had a rally earlier that day, had only drawn 300.

And it was only 3.45.

By 4.30, the police, who had been expecting a crowd of no more than 1000 people, had called in reserves to clear passageways in case of an emergency. The growing crowd was clearly much greater than 1000.

On the stage, a Dixieland band replete with straw boaters started playing. Meanwhile a bouncy MC led the audience in chants for Newt and against Romney and Obama. At 5 she told us that the police were now estimating the crowd at 6,000, the largest crowd ever in Cambier Park (that turned out to be an exaggeration---a rock concert a year or so earlier had brought out nearly 7000 people).

She also told us that there had been an accident on the I-75 and that was delaying Newt and his party but he 'would be here soon'. (That was incorrect. We learned later that Newt's organizers had at the last minute fitted in another rally in Fort Myers and at 5 when our rally was scheduled to start he was still speaking in Fort Myers.)

At 5.30, I nipped across to Starbucks on 5th Avenue for some coffee and we tapped into a stash of cheese and biscuits we had brought with us.

Various Gingrich buttons on sale at the rally: "Newt Rocks", "NEWT-ER OBAMA 2012",  and "Newt 12". Note the sign across the top: "Annoy a Liberal---work hard, be happy!"

A woman with a hat covered with Republican charms---elephants, flags etc. The pink pin says, "Hot Chicks Vote Republican"

We listened to people around us, many of whom seemed more anti-Obama, than pro-Gingrich. The hatred of Obama was fierce and vicious. He was a socialist, a crook, and Un-American while Michelle was 'disgusting'. They entertained each other with 'fair and balanced' news items from Fox News and Rush Limbaugh.

Pat and I, who think that Obama has been doing pretty well coping with the financial and economic mess left behind  by George Bush, were reminded of a separatist play we saw in Montreal in 1976. The audience cheered the anti-English sentiments of the play so much that at intermission we were afraid to speak English. At the Naples rally we whispered to each other in case the rabid people around us caught an 'eh' or an 'out' that would give us away as godless, socialists from Canada.

The people were mainly seniors, some of them residents of Florida but there were many 'snow birds' who had fled the cold of Chicago, Indianapolis etc to spend a few months in Naples. They were 99.9% white. I saw two African-Americans, one a technician helping set up the sound system, and the other a young man who was running for some state office.

One of the two African-Americans at the rally. This one is a technician, while the other was a candidate for a state office.

There weren't any Latinos in the audience so far as I could tell. But there was a Latino-looking lad of about 10 who, in the disorganization as people waited for Newt, managed to get onto the stage. Holding a "Vote Newt" sign in front of him, he danced to the music of the band. Republicans don't seem to be very musical (witness Romney's painful versions of America the Beautiful) but this kid had rhythm. Moving the sign like a burlesque dancer moves her fan (I have seen that in movies), he captivated the audience.

From time to time, a worried looking geezer would clamber onto the stage, look out at the audience and shout in a pleading voice, "Martha, I'm here." The crowd cheered each time.

At 6, the crowd was getting rambunctious, despite the entertainment provided by the MC, the band, the young dancer and the lost geezer. Instead of following the MC's chants, people started their own chant: "We want Newt, we want Newt, Newt, Newt, Newt". Then from the back of the crowd someone started singing American the Beautiful---in tune, unlike Mitt's renditions! Soon the 6000 were all standing and singing. Relieved, the MC suggested they sing it again, which they did. And then, for good measure, they sang it a third time.

We eavesdropped on two couples behind us who when they weren't condemning Obama were comparing notes on the best marine hotels to stay at when they sailed  their boats/yachts back to New Jersey. Sounded to me like members of the 1% club!

Finally, at 6.30, we saw the flashing red lights of police cars as they escorted Newt's campaign bus to the street behind the band shell.

After a few moments of quiet, Newt and his wife Callista strolled onto the stage.

And the crowd went wild, cheering and cheering.

After being introduced by someone---who had the good sense to talk for only 30 seconds---Newt started to speak. Without notes or a teleprompter.

I wondered what we were in for. Would this be one of his interminable, rambling, philosophical discourses?

I remembered a meeting years ago in Ottawa at which Tommy Douglas, the Father of Canadian Medicare, was one of the speakers. He started by saying that the organizers had asked him to keep his remarks to 20 minutes. Tommy who was noted for long speeches protested, "Politicians can't get the dust off their tonsils in twenty minutes".

In fact, Newt spoke for only 18 minutes---I timed him. He began by thanking the young dancer who he understood had helped entertain the crowd. (The lad stayed on the stage next to Newt, listening to the speech until I guess he got bored. Then he started to dance again---until one of the security people hustled him off the stage.)

Newt and Callista, with the young 'Latino' dancer, in a blue shirt and jeans, to the left of Newt---before he was ejected.

The speech was crisp and coherent. There were lots of 'red meat' jibes about Obama and Romney, which the crowd loved. When he finished it was clear the crowd had forgiven him for keeping them waiting.

They were his!

I was so impressed with the speech and the way the crowd received it that I sent a text message to a friend back in Canada who shares our love for American politics, "Romney is toast"

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So much for my skill as a pundit!

As you know, Romney went on to trounce Newt a week later at the Florida primary on Tuesday, January 31st.

Millions of Super Pac dollars in negative ads helped turn the Florida Republican voters against Newt.

And of course, Newt hurt his own cause by a lack-lustre performance in the two Florida debates, and by his promise to set up a moon colony once he became president. The moon colony promise was designed to appeal to laid-off space engineers around Cape Canaveral but Romney quickly labelled it as just another of Newt's' lunatic ideas' (I am not sure whether Mitt intended the pun).

A friend argues that politics is about poetry and plumbing---'poetry' to create a vision the public can believe in, and 'plumbing' to organize your supporters and get the vote out.

Newt is good at poetry but not at plumbing. You shouldn't keep 6000 people waiting for an hour and a half.

At the moment---as I write this Posting---Newt seems to be out of the running for the Republican nomination for President.

But Newt has been written off before.

Like a cat, he may have a few lives left.

Anyway, we are grateful to him (and Callista) for giving us the opportunity to experience American politics unfiltered by television anchors and pundits.

It was great fun!

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See you on February 19, 2012 for Posting #136 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting,  or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

Note:

I am working on Posting # 7 on my The Icewine Guru blog. It should be up in the next week or so, at: http://theicewineguru.blogspot.com/