Too Early for President Bush
President Bush finally addressed CPAC, but he happened to do it at 7:00 am this morning. With Secret Service screening that means people had to be there two hours before.
Needless to say I didn’t get up at 4:00 am to stand in a security line only to sit in a hotel ballroom for two hours. I engaged in some “weblogger dialogues” last night that kept me up very late. Sure, I like President Bush, but I did that stuff when he came to Milwaukee to campaign in 2004. Been there, done that.
So I watched Bush’s speech through the eyes of my fellow webloggers John Hawkins:
I was next to some college students who literally left their hotels at 3:45 AM and got there at 4 AM. They were jacked up out of their minds to hear the President speak — in fact, I think most people were pretty excited. The crowd cheered each person who walked onto the stage to sit down, the crowd cheered the placement of the presidential seal on the podium, they even cheered the guy who put Bush’s note on the podium.
Then when Bush finally spoke, he got a raucous welcome — the crowd just loved him. It was sort of a legacy/why it’s so important we have a Republican President in 2008 speech.
And Philip Klein:
He may be considered a lame duck by many and have anemic poll numbers, but when President Bush took the stage here at CPAC around 7:15 this morning, he received a rock star’s welcome. People began lining up to see him in the middle of the night. The audience interrupted his 40 minute address repeatedly with applause, on several occasions even breaking into chants of “four mor years.”
And Ed Morrissey.
That’s something else than what we see here in Europe. The media, the writers, everyone loves Obama/Clinton and everyone hates Bush. It’s a shame, but that’s how it is. I hope McCain wins the battle.