Last night, I attended the Douglas County Republican Party Elephant Remembers Dinner with about 35 of my best liberty loving Republican friends.
Coincidentally, the event fell on my husband’s 52nd birthday, and Omaha is about 1 1/2 hours away from our home. So, even though my husband doesn’t often attend political functions with me, this happened to hit on a good weekend (no call), so I suggested he take the afternoon off, I’d get Grandma to come and stay with the kids, and we’d go to Omaha, spend the night (and then, on Saturday morning, we could go to Cabela’s in Omaha for the latest in sporting goods shopping—I think it was Cabela’s that convinced him that this would be a good idea).
Now my husband’s lunchtime getaway ended up being closer to a 3:30 departure from work (we were wanting to leave by 4 for Omaha), due to a baby delivery and some other things that had come up. I had all of my things packed, but I hadn’t packed all of his clothes for Saturday, since I thought he’d be back in time to do so, so things got a little bit frantic as we were getting ready to depart after I’d picked kids up from school (Grandma was here by this time). We were trying to get the last of the things together, and I specifically recall asking him, as he walked down the stairs from our bedroom, if he’d gotten the suitcase—and he said “yes, it’s down there already”…a comment which I took to mean “in the car.”
It was 3:50, I was saying goodbye to the kids, getting the last of my stuff together, and we were ready to go. We got to Omaha, I went in to check in (same hotel where the event was taking place), and then he was going to pull the car around to the appropriate door and bring our luggage up so we could freshen up from the drive a bit before we headed to the dinner (fortunately, we’d put our suits on before we' left).
I ran into him, coming from the front desk, as he walked into the building. I asked where the suitcase was… “I’ll see you in 3 hours” was his answer. Long story short, we determined that in our rush, the suitcase had gotten as far as the garage, but not actually into the car.
After some discussion, I suggested that it made no sense for him to drive back home and get the suitcase—that we could just drive home after the event. Ultimately, neither of those were palatable alternatives, and after the event, we ran to the 24 hour Walmart up the street, way over-dressed in our suits at 11:30 p.m., and each of us bought a pair of jeans, socks, t-shirts, underwear, deodorant and toothbrushes, so that we could wear something other than our suits to Cabela’s this morning (again, we would have been terribly overdressed). Oh, and we got the cheapest shoes we could find, too.
As for the event, there was a very nice turnout. The Republican Liberty Caucus of Nebraska sponsored 4 tables—and was one of the Gold Sponsors of the event—the only organization to serve in that capacity, and right up there with U.S. Senators and other “big names” in GOP politics in the sponsorship list. We had a lot of people coming to talk with us—including people who in the past that have run away from us (although there are still a few doing that). We are, I think, moving the liberty ball down the field within the GOP.
The keynote speaker for the event was Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin. Now I have no idea where Governor Walker stands on issues of foreign policy, but I’m going to tell you that he was very impressive in his talk on issues of smaller government, state power over national power, free markets, etc. And he’s a VERY impressive as a speaker—he connects well with the audience and has a certain charisma. I am not easily impressed anymore, and tend to be a critical analyst of politicians (even ones I like), but I was impressed.
Could he be the next Reagan? Yes, I know that many of my libertarian-anarchist friends have problems with Reagan, but in our system of government, someone who talks the talk and moves the ball in the right direction, even without scoring a goal, or even getting into the “red zone”, is far better than someone who always goes the wrong way. Scott Walker may have a future in Republican politics, and while he wouldn’t be the ideal from the perspective of many of us, he might be one of the best among those who could potentially have some electoral success. Keep an eye on him.
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