Datechguy's Blog

I was at an event hosted by Granite Grok’s Mike Rogers at CPAC when Robert Stacy McCain (one of the 5 non-pols that Politico says you have to watch) came up to me and thanked me for “forgetting” my hat at CPAC 2010 (Stacy partied till 5 a.m. and I flew out a 7 but be that as it may…) That led to my hat going all over the country.

Stacy in my fedora was seen from New Orleans to Las Vegas, From Delaware to Sarah Palin’s house. As Politico said…

How can you find McCain? If the chain smoking and fedora don’t tip you off, he’ll be the guy in the press section who brings his family and boisterously laughs at Ann Coulter’s jokes, to the chagrin of mainstream types. And how do you know he’s pumped for this year? He’s already dubbed it the “best CPAC ever” and has planned how to “be in seven places simultaneously.”

And thus the Axis of Fedora was born.

Today Stacy is in Michigan doing shoe leather work, he went into a Romney HQ when that same Mike Rogers gave him a call just as he came through the door, well I’ll let Stacy tell the tale:

“I need to take this call,” I told the Romney volunteer lady, and retreated to the foyer area to talk to Mike. He was calling from an airport, about to board a flight back to New Hampshire, and said he’d been reading my campaign-trail blogging. As I was talking to him, however, a couple of young guys came out of a back office in the Romney headquarters, and I overheard one of them mutter the phrase “Santorum blogger.”

Busted.

By the time I got off the phone with Mike, one of the young Romney guys was standing there in a polite-but-serious posture. The dude looked like he might have played linebacker in high school. A brief conversation ensued, which I summarized on Twitter:

5:39 p.m.: Folks at Romney Michigan HQ recognize me, invite me to leave. Must be the hat.

The perils of notoriety. They didn’t even let me get a picture of the office.

The Fedora giveth and the Fedora taketh away.