Last night and today "Two Countries living inside one Border"

The traf­fic should have been the first clue.

After I left the Nashoba Club Restau­rant for din­ner (the best deci­sion I made of the night) I headed down to the con­ven­tion cen­ter, when I hit I93 south the traf­fic was bumper to bumper with police stop­ping peo­ple on the side. I had to make my first call in to WCRN from the road. My con­tact in the Rom­ney cam­paign told me that my cre­den­tials would be at the cen­ter wait­ing for me.

When I finally got toward the center

that turned out not to be the case, I informed them of the con­fir­ma­tion of my cre­den­tials and was told they would look into it but was mis­in­formed that cre­den­tials were to be picked up here.

I was then informed that my cre­den­tials were wait­ing at the Cam­paign HQ but wasn’t in a posi­tion to go there a very nice guy named Craig said he would work on it, I called my con­nec­tion who said he would see if he could get them down there.

It was pretty cold but I had my trench coat & my inborn insu­la­tion finally Craig returned and said he would take me to the Weston next door where I could charge up and wait for my cre­den­tials to show up.

I spoke to sev­eral peo­ple there, a young fel­low from Texas was also wait­ing for cre­den­tials as every­one around me drank about 15 min later Andrew showed up and I had my credentials.

You’ll note that cre­den­tial said “attendee” rather than “press” there are 1200 rea­sons why that was the case, all of them dol­lars that was the fee assessed by the cam­paign for mem­bers of the press. For a major media orga­ni­za­tion that’s No Big Deal, for me that’s a Mort­gage pay­ment com­ing out of what is left of my sav­ings after four years of Obama.

The bad news was I didn’t have access to the same set-​up as the press on the ris­ers of the top floor, so I found myself a wall with a plug to charge my phone and lap­top and start­ing search­ing the results.

I was not sur­prised to see North Car­olina & Vir­ginia called, My thought was of course, the idea is to hold back.

My first dis­ap­point­ment was PA, but it was not a huge sur­prise, con­nec­tions not with­stand­ing with Black Pan­thers and the voter id law not being enforced.

New Hamp­shire WAS a sur­prise, but then again I wasn’t aware of this:

New Hamp­shire Democ­rats appear to have taken advan­tage of Judge John Lewis’ deci­sion to scrap the domi­cile rules. The end result was that bus­load after bus­load of out of state stu­dents were fer­ried to the polls to vote in New Hamp­shire. They killed the con­sti­tu­tional amend­ments. They elected a Demo­c­rat gov­er­nor. And they gave New Hamp­shire to Obama. (I recall sug­gest­ing that exactly this would hap­pen as a result, and that it was in fact the entire point of choos­ing Lewis to toss out the rules).

The Grok crew will be fol­low­ing up on this btw.

Now in terms of busi­ness the smart thing would have been to be upstairs min­gling and pass­ing out cards, but I went straight to the phones the first call was to Stacy in Ohio and he was say­ing bluntly that while turnout in GOP areas in Ohio were not look­ing good it’s moot if Florida or VA doesn’t come through, I called blog­gers across the coun­try and things were not sound­ing good but all that can be done once the polls close is to count and wait.

It was appar­ently that the crowd was not all that level-​headed and panic seemed to come in very fast, a video from Ohio to reas­sure folks really spoke vol­umes, you don’t have to issue stuff like that if you’re winning.

Michi­gan didn’t sur­prise me that much either but Wis­con­sin? That was a shock when it was called, I spent a lot of time look­ing online to see what the raw vote was and see­ing lit­tle or nothing.

What was really both­er­ing me was Florida ( I heard insid­ers talk­ing that Florida & VA were OK but Ohio was a worry) but polls had shown a solid lead for Mitt in Florida if it was still not called that was a real issue and might depress the GOP vote fur­ther west (I sus­pect that had plenty to do with the Utah result of Mia Love).

But I wasn’t really both­ered until I bought a Diet Pepsi, I didn’t take the time to ask the price and found myself pay­ing $4.75 for a can poured into a plas­tic cup with ice.

On some of the calls peo­ple were becom­ing angry, it was a bad sign, but amid the smoke as I watched returns see­ing Liz War­ren pull far­ther & far­ther ahead (appar­ently dems learned from Jan 2010 and the full get out the vote effort of Nov 2010 was in play) there was one light, they had “called” Q2 early as a win but the num­bers started to reverse until it was too close to call. The race I fig­ured we would go down fight­ing on turned into our only win of the night.

Finally Ohio was called and it was pretty much all over. It was pretty clear who the only peo­ple happy in the room were

Some half-​hearted attempts at cheers were made then Mitt Took the stage

”

His speech was not mem­o­rable and as I heard him speak I remem­bered what a very wise per­son told me about Mitt who had worked with him, say­ing his sin was Narcissism.

I spoke to some young repub­li­cans who posed for me

that night for their take

I spoke briefly with Eric Fehrnstrom

He declined an inter­view, but was hold­ing up pretty good.

I can’t say the same for many of the oth­ers, I talked to peo­ple from all over and there was a sad­ness and more than that a shock, it was not the res­ig­na­tion of a McCain vs Obama where vic­tory was not expected, it was the shock of the Yan­kees in the 1^st inning of game 7 in 2004 when the Sox took the lead they would never relin­quish, it was the Shock of democ­rats when Scott Brown won in 2010.

The democ­rats took the lessons of Scott Brown in Mass­a­chu­setts and learned them, they took the lessons of 2010 and learned them. It remains to be seen if the GOP will do the same.

As I was leav­ing Hong Kong TV took me aside and asked me about the race on cam­era, we talked for twenty min­utes. At the time I did not know if the Obama vot­ers had turned out, (not gen­er­ally he had mil­lions fewer votes nation­wide but in the right places) or if the GOP had stayed home (which it turned out they did in droves) and I made two cases:

1. If you nom­i­nate mod­er­ate to lead a con­ser­v­a­tive party you will fail because he will run away from the party instead of mak­ing the case for it.

2. Con­ser­vatism like any­thing else needs to be TAUGHT and Sold and you can’t stop teach­ing or selling

But to both them and French Radio with who I spoke to I described the United States as “two coun­tries within one bor­der” That being the case the only hope to go to the people.

Go to the Lati­nos and Black Amer­i­cans, explain WHY con­ser­v­a­tive eco­nom­ics work for them. Explain why an open bor­der hurts THEM and theirs and explain why the enti­tle­ment soci­ety makes them peons and slaves to the state as sure as if they were in the plan­ta­tions of South Amer­ica or the old South.

Go to women explain WHY not only con­ser­v­a­tive eco­nom­ics works for them but WHY con­ser­vatism in social issues ben­e­fits them, their chil­dren and themselves.

Let Amer­i­cans know that WHY a strong Amer­ica makes them safer than a weak one, make the case and do it every sin­gle day.

That is a bet­ter invest­ment than any dol­lar to any super­pac, until that is learned by the GOP we will see this again.