Blatant Reality

On the eve of the South Carolina GOP primary, Mike Huckabee came to the University of South Carolina for a late night “jam” session and to give a campaign speech. Compared to the Romney event just two days ago, this was a totally different deal. First off, Huckabee had a ton more media attention than Romney had. Before the Romney event, for example, there were no satellite trucks out front of the Russel House student union. Huckabee, on the other hand, had two satellite trucks parked out there for at least an hour before the event was supposed to start. In fact, the police closed down Greene Street which runs in front of the Russel house because of the all the vehicles that were going to be there for the event.

 

 

Another thing that separated this event from the Romney one was the shear magnitude of it. Not only was the media attention bigger, but the crowd was bigger along with the room we were placed in. I mean, Romney might have gotten a platform to which to speak from but Huckabee actually got an honest to goodness stage with lights and everything.

 

 

One thing that I found interesting by just looking around the auditorium was that there was a much younger crowd tonight than there was at the Romney event. From my observations, I would say that there was at least a 8 to 1 student/adult ratio here for Huckabee where as the Romney event maybe had a 4 to 1 student/adult ratio. This is very good news for Huckabee. This election is looking like it is going to rely heavily on the participation of the youth of this nation. If Huckabee can rally the youth to his cause, he will have a very good chance at beating whoever the democrats put up against him. But I am getting ahead of myself, Huckabee still has a long and hard road ahead of him before he can even start thinking about running against the democratic candidate.

 

 

When the event kicked off at 9pm, it started with two guys who are supposedly pretty famous on YouTube and whose names escape me. They sang a couple parodies of songs that focussed on, you guessed it, Mike Huckabee’s campaign. Next, an actual band (whose name I seem to have also forgot) came out on stage and did a couple classic Southern Rock songs that got the crowd excited. After they played 3-4 songs, it was finally time to introduce the man of the night, but not before four people introduced him.

 

It was pretty funny seeing one person after another come out and introduce the next introducer. The Lt. Governor of South Carolina, Andre Bauer, came after what I think was a campaign manager. Bauer then introduced his chief rival in the previous election, Mike Campbell, also a Huckabee supporter. Campbell followed by introducing former wrestling sensation Ric Flair who, as one might expect, is also a Mike Huckabee supporter. Flair, after giving a short speech that can be viewed here, finally introduced Mike Huckabee.

 

 

Mike Huckabee’s speech was short, only about 15 minutes long, but included the mixture of humor and seriousness one has come to expect from the man. He started off by joking that once he is president, he will appoint Ric Flair as his new Secretary of Homeland Security. That got the crowd cheering and laughing but I did hear a few people yell out something to the affect as “what about Chuck Norris?” During his speech, he also talked about making sure everyone goes out and votes for him tomorrow in the primary and if they don’t, he will just refer you to Flair.

 

The majority of his speech focussed on how Washington’s true purpose is to empower the people, not take power away. He told the audience that the people in Washington D.C. had forgot what the real world was like so they should choose someone who hasn’t been corrupted by Washington. He continued by saying that he promises that withing 18 month of him coming to office, the US will have a “true border” that will stem the flow of illegal immigrants. He clarified that he was proud that he lived in a country that people wanted to go into and not flee from. Nevertheless, he believes that illegal immigration is not fair to those who are trying to immigrate legally so it must be stopped. After talking some about the economy, Huckabee concluded with the story about when his dad took him to see the governor because he might “live your whole life and never see a governor in person.” If you want to see the whole speech, I have it broken up into two parts:

 

First Part of Huckabee’s Speech

 

Second Part of Huckabee’s Speech

 

 

After he was done with his speech, Huckabee rocked out with the band with an electric bass guitar. But let me tell you a funny story about that guitar that you probably don’t know. That guitar is actually my good friend’s guitar. Basically, when I arrived at the Russel House waiting for the event to start, several of his campaign staff were running around asking people if they had or knew anyone who had a bass guitar they could borrow. When they asked me, I said I had a friend who had one and was willing to let them borrow it. Long story short, we brought up the bass, Huckabee rocked out with it (click to see the video), and we all were heroes. Oh, the funny thing about this story is that my friend who owned the bass is a staunch Obama supporter and she was wearing a shirt that said “We will Barack you” when she gave the it to the campaign. Luckily, Huckabee’s campaign staff has a pretty good sense of humor and thought it was all really funny.