Romney Victory Party

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[Jon] Last night, I went with Brian and Kevin to the Romney victory party at the Embassy Suites hotel in Southfield, Michigan. It took us about an hour to get there. We got there at 8:10. As we walked in, there were tons of people in the lobby of the hotel wearing Romney gear. We registered on a sign-up sheet and grabbed some "Mitt for President" stickers and some "Change" and "Romney for President" signs, walked past the cash bar and appetizers (meat balls, cheese and crackers, some other things I didn't recognize) and entered into the ballroom.

The ballroom was packed! The media was set up along the back and side walls. People were holding up signs and cheering. The place smelled like hot, sweaty people, booze, and mal-digested appetizers. We slowly worked our way inside until we had a good view of the podium. If you watched the Fox News broadcast, we were just over the right shoulder of the reporter, though likely out of camera range. Every time the reporter spoke, the room broke out in cheers and chants "Mitt Mitt Mitt Mitt!" The TVs in the room were tuned to Fox News (of course) so everybody knew when they were on TV.

At about 9:00, Tagg came out and said that Mitt had arrived but wouldn't be out until the media called the race. Then people started throwing hats and t-shirts to the crowd. I got a hat that says, "Mitt for Michigan" on the front and "Romney for President" on the back. Fifteen minutes later, Mitt's brother took the stage to introduce the "winner of the Michigan primary, Mitt Romney!" The crowd went wild. The first video up top takes place right at that point. I taped Romney coming out onto the stage. People were cheering and shouting. It was great.

Romney got up to the stage and gave his acceptance speech. Everybody loved it. He talked about the broken promises from Washington politicians and how he was going to go and clean house. I taped a little bit of his speech in the second video above (I didn't tape too much because I'm still unsure about the video capacity of our new camera - as it turns out, I ended up using only about half of the 1 gig card last night).

After Mitt spoke, his wife, Ann said a few words, mostly saying that Mitt was the best person for the job. Then Mitt said a whole bunch of thank-you's. At the end, everybody cheered some more. Mitt then started working the crowd, shaking hands, and signing t-shirts, hats, books, and signs. We tried to get into position for a hand shake, but as he was getting close to our side of the floor, the Secret Service told Mitt that he had to go back up on the stage. So no luck for us on the handshake (although Chris Beatty, another friend who was down there with is wife, was standing right next to me and shook his hand - I got a picture of the moment immediately preceding the handshake). A member of the press was standing right by us and was very upset that Mitt turned around and went the other direction without shaking his hand. He thought Mitt had a personal vendetta against him and said he was planing on writing in his paper that Mitt refused to shake his hand. Whatever!!??

So we gave up on shaking Mitt's hand and left, grabbing a few lawn signs on our way out (Need one? I have several!).

I was really glad I went to this event. It was a lot of fun -- certainly much better than it would have been had he lost. Hopefully he'll be able to turn the momentum from this victory into victories in future primaries and the general election. Mitt for President!