The Rob Portman Fan Club's winter meeting
Saturday morning's Northeast Hamilton County Republican Club pancake breakfast was one of the more lively GOP events we've seen around here since the November 2006 election, an event that gave Ohio Republicans a bad case of acid reflux.
Since then, we've seen a lot of Republican events where folks with hang-dog looks stood around looking at their shoes, like boys at a junior high school dance.
But the 300 or so Republicans who showed up at the Sharonville Convention Center Saturday morning were pretty energized and looking forward to another battle for Ohio this fall. Energized, yes; but not particularly unified - the presidential straw poll they conducted showed they are all over the map when it comes to the GOP presidential nomination. Mitt Romney took 27 percent, followed closely by John McCain at 24 percent and Fred Thompson with 23 percent.
They united, though, on one subject - their former congressman and hope for the future, Rob Portman, who made a late entrance (he had to coach his daughter's soccer game first) and delivered a rally-the-troops speech.
Portman has been delivering variations of the same speech a lot lately, traveling the state as the featured speaker at GOP events in parts of the state where he is not as well known (not to mention idolized) by Republican voters as he is in his old House district.
He's running for something. The only question is what he's running for. The smart money says governor of Ohio in 2010. Democrat Ted Strickland is riding pretty high right now, but politics is a business of peaks and valleys and who knows whether he will be vulnerable as a candidate for re-election two years from now?
Saturday morning, the Republicans from Cincinnati's northeast suburbs made it clear they'd vote for Portman for anything. Some of them were absolutely giddy over the prospect of Portman's return.
Sharonville Mayor Virgil Lovitt said Sharonvillle would be the place to come "to get your Portman 2010 bumper stickers. I don't know what office will be on those bumper stickers, but we'll have plenty of them."
Blue Ash councilman Rick Bryan trumped Lovitt by pulling out the biggest card in the deck: "Twenty years from now,'' Bryan told the assembled Republicans, "you'll be able to say, 'I once had pancakes with President Portman.'''
3 Comments:
at 11:30 PM, January 21, 2008 
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at 10:22 AM, January 22, 2008 
Anonymous said...
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at 12:45 PM, January 22, 2008 
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Post a Comment*Howie, I was there. I was at this Repug Hate-Fest because a family member dragged me there. Seeing Repug operatives in their native habitats is always such a hoot anyway.
I know you heard and overheard some of their hate-speech: Democrat-bashing, gay-bashing, Jew-bashing, Black-bashing. A whole bunch of racist and sexist locker room talk. Oh yeah, they praised Jesus an awaful lot.
They're gonna need more than prayers, though.
This is going to be such a washout for the Repugs this year that they will think of Election Night 2006 as "the good old days."
If they lost big with $2.50/gallon gas, wait till gas is over $3 a gallon.
If they lost big when there were 3,000 Americans killed in Iraq, wait till we pass the 5,000 mark.
If they lost big when we spent $500,000,000,000 on this illegal war, wait till we hit the trillion mark.
If they lost big when the dollar was on par with the Euro, wait till they face the voters when Chimpy McHitler has plunged us into his 2nd recession and the dollar is worth less than the Canadian loonie, on its way to even-Steven with the peso. (Well, that will take care of some of the 12 million illegals BushCo let into the country to drive down working-class wages.)
If they lost big when Bob Ney and Mark Foley were the only criminal Repugs in Congress, wait till they face the voters with 8-10 more Congress criminals' mug shots on the TV commercials.
If they lost big when the housing sector of the economy was running well, wait till they face the voters with 2 million more American families in foreclosure and entire communities devastated by Repug housing/lending policies.
If they lost big when Bush and the Repugs gave corporations tax breaks for sending 2 million U.S. jobs overseas, wait till they face the voters with 5 million Americans being replaced by people too lazy to sneak in illegally.
If they lost big-time wehn the American public didn't know that Bush's Consumer Product Safety Commission was looking the other way while China poisoned American kids and pets, wait till the voters go in to the booth fully aware of how damaging and literally life-threatening Repug policies have been to them.
Bush, Cheney and the Repugs have made America hated around the world and Americans too poor to travel anyway.
Finally, if they lost big with corrupt Repugs like Ken Blackwell couting the votes, imagine how big they will lose when the votes are finally counted honestly.
The Great Myth used to hold that we had two political parties, each with their own ideas and visions for making America stronger and more prosperous. Now, there is only one political party committed to that goal.
The people currently running the Repugnicant Party would literally let each and every one of the people reading this, even their most loyal party stalwarts, die a horrible death if the alternative was that some industrialist somewhere might not make as much money as he or she had wanted to.
Thanks to the Repugs, the insurance companies can take life-saving medical treatments out of your hands.
Thanks to the Repugs, corporations can take your jobs and your health insurance with it and hire someone in another country and pay them less.
Thanks to the Repugs, corporations can kill you, your children, and your pets with unsafe and poisonous products and there is nothing you can do about it.
Thanks to the Repugs, America's senior citizens are paying twice as much for life-saving medicines as they were before.
Oh, yeah, don't forget the record budget deficits and trade deficits we are running up just so the wealthiest one percent of us can pay fewer taxes.
wtf?
jesus. get a life.
To the 1st comments I say I feel like I've been robbed of my thoughts and feelings about the repugs. It's nice to no there are others that realized the repugs are EVIL and do NOT represent me, my family, or our hopes and desires for this wonderful country and our neighbors around the world. Though there may still be a large contingent of repugs around this area. The rest of the country has pulled their heads out of the sand and can't wait to vote for as many Democrats as possible. Rest in peace GOP. FYI - if Regan were alive today, he'd beat the heck out of the Bushes and declaire himself a Democrat.
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