Well, not really.
The day before the New Hamsphire Republican Primary, Josh came home from wherever he was and said "dude, I think Rick Santorum is next door."
"Huh? Why is Rick Santorum at a crack house?"
He said that he had read earlier that Santorum would be visiting Somersworth on a campaign stop, and after checking online, he had in fact stopped here- not at the crack house, but at the American Legion at the end of the block. Josh asked me if I wanted to go, and after seeing that it was scheduled to start in 15 minutes, I said why the hell not and went.
Let me just say this right off the bat- while I generally align myself with more conservative viewpoints (at least in terms of size/power of government and anything relating to money and taxes), I wouldn't call myself a fan of Rick Santorum. It was basically a case of "he's on TV, he's running for President and he's a 2 minute walk from where I'm sitting in filth and staring at the internet. Why not?"
Have you ever been to a campaign rally? I hadn't. And now I have. And let me tell you- they're not really much to get excited about.
American Legion Post 69, with quite the crowd and anticipation
I noticed immediately that a good 25% of the room was media- either people with enormous cameras or nerdy looking kids with notebooks and press passes. The rest of the crowd was middle-aged people, the front half generally interested in Santorum, and the back half quite possibly there for the same reason we were. A woman sat on the floor behind me, with her kids crawling all over my feet. She paid pretty much zero attention to anything and aggravated the hell out of me for having her stupid kids an inch from getting stepped on for the entirety of the event.
Rick was of course late (only 10 minutes though) and walked in to cheers and a lot of camera flashes. He launched into a speech about what he stood for, what he would do, how he was going to change the world, how it all starts in small towns like this one, blah blah blah. At one point I asked Josh (who I consider the expert on politics in my life) if anything he was saying was different from any of the other GOP candidates. Nope- all generic stuff.
He got some laughs and a few cheers. He spoke well but didn't really inspire me to change my opinion of him. After 5 minutes of him saying what he wanted and ending with "why can't we have that?" I said "because it's not possible" slightly too loudly. But I got a laugh from a stranger, so I felt good.
blurface! Look at how miserable his kids are!
Something I noticed that's worth mentioning- it's 2011 (it was when this happened at least), and people still haven't learned to silence their phones in public places. You're in a political rally with a presidential hopeful in a room full of media and you don't silence your phone? Seriously? The best part was that one of the people who didn't turn off their phone was standing in front of me. When he turned around to leave, I saw that he had a media pass from the freaking BBC. Way to be professional pal!
My pal Rick then said he would be accepting questions. The first question was something along the lines of "if you were elected, what would you do about No Child Left Behind?" He launched into a solid 8 minutes of talking, all saying what it was, how it came about, his thoughts on it, etc. I asked Josh why the hell he was talking so long, and he responded with what should have been an absurdly obvious answer- he's talking super long so he doesn't have to answer any more questions. So... he's filibustering himself? Yup!
Sure enough, after 8 minutes of talking to get to "I'd repeal it," he said he could only take a few more. Some stupid kid next to us asked that since it appeared that the government was working hard to help kids who struggled in school, what type of incentives would they give to kids who did really well in school?
......huh?
At this point I got to see something awesome- people are ASSHOLES. So many people grunted and talked amongst themselves, saying how stupid of a question it was, it was a waste of time, etc. Some people flat out shouted from across the room what a stupid question it was. "How about a real question! HARUMF!" It was awesome. Rick just said "well, if you're in the top of your class, what more incentive do you need?" to lots of cheers and angry looks at the punk in the back of the room. Clearly this dirtbag kid just wanted the government to give him free ipods or something for getting good grades (wouldn't be surprised if it happened!). Piece of garbage.
The next question went to some stupid old lady who stuttered her way through a 3 minute "question," starting by saying Santorum wasn't her first choice and babbled her way through talking about him taking money from people blah blah and how much money did he take from blah blah blah. I don't even know what the hell she was talking about, and the room HATED her. "GET TO THE QUESTION!" "RIDICULOUS!" Some real mob mentality. But hey, I can't blame them- they probably had real questions and Mr. 10-minute answer only allowed for like 4 in the entire 45 minute meeting that he was 10 minutes late too. Oh well.
He gave a last little speech to get people psyched and headed out. Josh and I were quite sick of standing, but figured if we were this close to the possible president (haha), we should get a picture or a handshake if possible. So, we battled through the horde, and I got this sweet shot of him giving the politician HEY THERE PAL point. Josh even got a handshake and pretended he was a big fan. Josh said he had very rough hands.
We headed out among the crowds and saw people being stopped left and right to get interviewed for the local news. SHOCKINGLY, Josh and I were ignored (thank god).
Santorum won 9.4% of the votes. I wonder how many came from good ole Somersworth? I do appreciate the stop Rick, but I'm sure you very quickly saw why nobody else bothered coming.
I can now say I've been to a campaign rally/stop. It was interesting in many ways, but not really caring about the candidate definitely made it more of an experience than anything I actually cared about.
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