Like Byron, I’m back from today’s McCain-Palin rally in Fairfax, Virginia (saw NRO’s Mark Hemingway there, too). To his observations, I’d add, there were a lot of women in the crowd, and a surprisingly young crowd as well. There were two separate handmade signs held by women indicating they were former Hillary supporters now backing McCain-Palin, and one of them spoke to the crowd as the rally began. This speaker mentioned the lipstick line, and said that “it was the sort of thing you would see in the fifth grade… and I don’t want a fifth-grader running my country!”
One person plugged in to the organizers put the crowd at 23,000, but I want to double check that. This account puts it at “more than 10,000.”
Some coverage is noting Fred Thompson, who warmed up the crowd, for mentioning Jeremiah Wright. But I think a more stinging zinger noted the plethora of Democratic operatives now looking for dirt in Alaska. Thompson said (according to my notes), “The Washington insiders say, ‘we don’t know her. She hasn’t been on the Sunday shows. She hasn’t been on the cover of Time magazine.’ [Obviously, she is this week.] Well, whose fault is that? She ain’t been hidin’ from anybody! … They’ve sent a planeload of folks to Alaska to look into her background. I think they ought to send a planeload of people to Chicago for a few days – they’ve had two years to do it!”
By the way, while the crowd was enthralled by Palin, it’s worth noting that the crowd did start chanting “John Mc-Cain! John Mc-Cain!” at various points, and not just when he was speaking. So it’s not like he’s the forgotten man in his own campaign.