Wicomico County McCain/Palin rally in pictures and text

Yesterday Salisbury’s City Park became a political venue as hundreds celebrated the Republican ticket of John McCain, Sarah Palin, and Andy Harris. As I often do, the pictures will have much of the story but there were other noteworthy items I’m placing in the text portion of this post.

While this annual event is hosted by State Senator Lowell Stoltzfus, this year he decided to bring the focus to the national ticket. But Stoltzfus, who was described in his introduction as one “who speaks from truth and righteousness” did serve as the master of ceremonies for the event. He brought up the two featured speakers, Congressional candidate and State Senator Andy Harris and two-time candidate for Governor and more recently Bush Administration official Ellen Sauerbrey.

Before the speechmaking commenced, those attending had the opportunity to participate in a live auction of a number of nice items ranging from books to golf and travel packages to the ever-popular in these parts Smith Island cakes. (They’re Maryland’s official state dessert.)

One thing that wasn’t auctioned off was what you saw in the picture above with Senator Stoltzfus. This allowed him to quip that “Sarah can’t be bought.” It’s interesting to ponder whether there’s any market for John McCain cutouts compared to Palin ones.

This event also brought out most of the local GOP politicians along with a few select state ones. It’s probably fortunate that they were simply introduced for the most part and didn’t take the time to speechify.

We did hear briefly from representatives of the local GOP youth groups; pictured below is Mark Biehl of the Lower Shore Young Republicans. It’s great to see our youth represented in this way.

The final preliminary speaker was State Senator Allan Kittleman, who will become Minority Leader in the next General Assembly session come January. He praised Senator Stoltzfus for his “principled” stances and said that “(had) we listened to Lowell Stoltzfus, we wouldn’t be in our (dire financial) situation,” referring to an alternative spending plan which Kittleman claimed Democrats could support but couldn’t cross the aisle to vote for because of pressure from above.

While the auction was a nice fundraiser and the food was excellent (particularly the barbequed pork), the people came to whoop it up for John McCain, Sarah Palin, and Andy Harris.

After Lowell introduced the man who he said exhibited integrity and honesty, and who has the “right philosophy” to be our next Congressman, it was time for Andy Harris to continue stating his case for a promotion to Washington, D.C.

Making it clear that, “we need to change the way Congress does business,” Harris blasted the recent passage of the nearly trillion dollar financial rescue bill as a “bailout for Wall Street” and charged the package was loaded with tax breaks for “special interests.” (Would someone on the Kratovil side like to argue that point?) Washington was “broken”, continued Harris, who then painted his opponent as “not the independent conservative” Frank Kratovil is making himself out to be.

Again turning his complaint to the Democrat-controlled House, he hammered the body for adjourning without doing anything to address the energy situation or illegal immigration. (Actually, Congress accomplished one thing by doing nothing - they allowed the offshore drilling ban to expire. As I noted a few days back though, the oil industry is waiting for a clearer signal from Washington before going whole hog into the exploration efforts.)

Most notably though, Harris predicted that this election would be close enough to be decided by the absentee ballots and beseeched all of us to “win this election on the ground.”

Before introducing Ellen Sauerbrey, we were surprised to hear from another speaker who called in to send his regards. On the phone, former Lieutenant Governor and GOPAC head Michael Steele exhorted the gathering to “work hard” for the election of Andy Harris. “I cannot tell you enough how important the election of Andy Harris is,” remarked Steele.

As our surrogate speaker for McCain/Palin, Sauerbrey - who “should’ve been Governor” according to Stoltzfus, referring to the 1994 election - was pleased that she “can dabble in politics again” after serving in the State Department for several years. After praising Andy Harris as a “stalwart conservative” who “can be fully trusted” in Congress, she turned her remarks first to Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin. Ellen told us what we already knew, that the GOP was “excited and elated” about the addition of Palin to the ticket and, quoting Michael Reagan, she said that “I saw my dad again, only he was a she.”

Sauerbrey then went on to describe the treatment Sarah has received from the drive-by media, asking where the outrage was about Palin’s personal e-mail account being hacked as opposed to the media-induced “Troopergate” scandal involving her family. And somehow family was not off limits in her case. Those “hysterical” attacks on Palin were because, Ellen opined, she presents a “fundamental threat to Democrats” - not just for four years, but for a whole voting bloc they’ve come to depend on in the women’s vote. So you get things said about her like the Philadelphia Inquirer calling Sarah’s views “radical” and “nutty.”

Ellen then talked about the “experience” factor in the race. It was “experience,” she claimed, “(which) brought us to the brink of financial collapse,” referring to policies pushed by former Presidents Carter and Clinton. More important was the “courage” Palin has shown thus far.

To be honest, I know she also praised John McCain but I think the crowd was more attentive to the red meat being tossed to them regarding Sarah Palin. Ellen did assail Barack Obama for his associations with people like Tony Rezko, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and Bill Ayers, but much of what she said about McCain in her conclusion was quoting from a column attributed to writer Thomas Sowell but was written by someone unknown.

The event drew about 300 people but neither one of the two local television stations nor the Daily Times bothered to send anyone to cover the event. It’s typical for this practice here in Salisbury - anytime the Democrats do something it makes news while the GOP toils in relative obscurity until the votes are counted. That’s our goal, to win Wicomico County for our team and let the other counties take care of their part of the bargain.

Kudos should go to Bonnie Luna for putting the event together...she even put me to work playing food server and cleaning up afterward. (Hey, I got to serve Senator Harris his pork barbeque.) It was a lot of labor but I enjoyed helping out.

Switching to the 'tooting my own horn' department:

You may notice that my BlogNetNews overall rank here in Maryland is number 1. I think this is the fifth time I've achieved that milestone, but something that's not as apparent is that I'm the first person I know of to score a trifecta - not only is my rank first overall but its also first on the per-post rating and among those bloggers considered conservative. (The latter is nothing unusual, I've been first on that measure for several weeks in a row.) So I'll enjoy the week at the top and see if I can make it two next Sunday.