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Blessings, Prayer, and the Pledge of Allegiance
NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. – Mike Huckabee rolled into Orange County
today for an event inside the gates of Bayview Estates—a development that bills
itself as a “Residential and Equestrian neighborhood.” Something tells me this
isn’t the target audience for Huckabee’s brand of populism. (Although he did get
his biggest round of applause when he started talking about the Fair Tax.) No signs of Mischa Barton
yet, but there were some other scenes that only a Huckabee fundraiser can
provide:
- A Huck
volunteer named Sharon
was put in charge of having the media sign-in. After one cameraman said
his correspondent had already written their names, Sharon responded with a wide smile: “Bless You.”
- Huckabee was asked about the youth vote
by an MTV News correspondent. Mind you that Newport
Beach is where that god-awful MTV show Newport Harbor is filmed. Unfortunately, I don’t think Huck watches much MTV, so he
didn’t quite note the irony.
- As
Huck shook hands and signed autographs, a greasy
guy in his mid-20s tried to impress a bronzed mid-20s gal by saying she
should go up to Huckabee and ask him to sign her breast, rock-star style.
He was kidding. I think.
- One of
the older women in the crowd had a red LED
ticker pinned to her shirt. Huckabee
2008 slowly crawled across her shirt on an endless loop. I should have
introduced her to the breast-autograph guy.
- Before
Huckabee gave his stump speech, one of his supporters went on stage to
offer an opening invocation. He asked Jesus to give Huckabee strength at
tonight’s debate, and he prayed that the American people would come to
their senses and support him.
- The
entire crowd pledged allegiance to the flag before Huckabee spoke. The
person-to-flag ratio in this estate is probably 5-to-1. I counted a few dozen lining the driveway alone.
In spite of—or maybe because of—all of this, Huckabee managed
to raise 100,000 dollars today. Upon hearing the news Huckabee
quipped, “Our campaign is so frugal, we could go a month on that. We probably
won’t but we could.” He's exactly right, if only because Huck will probably be out of the race in a
month.
About Chadwick Matlin
- Chadwick Matlin is the staff reporter for Slate's The Big Money, a new business site launching in the fall. He can be reached at Chadwick.Matlin+TH@gmail.com
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