Presidential Campaign Hits South Carolina

     Well, I guess it's our turn in the barrel.  At least there are fewer candidates on the tube.  (I guess we don't have tubes anymore, do we?)  Yesterday, the political junkie in the family asked if we wanted to go to John Kasich's town hall meeting/rally in Mt. Pleasant.  Feeling the need to stay somewhat involved, we agreed.  Cindy got the tickets to Finn's Brick Oven.  They were expecting 50 and got over 500.  He spoke to the crowd outside before coming in.  Fortunately we got their early enough to get seats, although we had to stand to see him.  His strong showing the night before in NH greatly increased the crowd.  He said that he beat Donald Trump 3-2 in Dixville Notch, the perennial "first in the nation community reporting".

     I don't see any slideouts, but I guess that's OK.  We took two cars because I had to go directly to PT while Durelle and Cindy had a nice Italian lunch...not in Finn's; it was way too busy.  Here's a shot of Kasich speaking.

     His line of patter was persuasive, but, more importantly, his answers were direct and non-evasive.  Plus, his interchanges with questioners was responsive, humorous, quick and clever...all indications to me of a sound native intelligence.  Cindy is a Democrat.  I'm a Republican who, in his first presidential election, voted for Nixon against JFK who had appointed me to West Point.  As a matter of fact, it was an absentee ballot that I mailed from MS to MA...I doubt it was even counted!  Nonetheless, both of us are looking for a centrist we can trust.  As a matter of fact, Cindy and her brother Mark, who is somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan, could end up voting for the same candidate this year.  That's an event that could probably cause a reversal in the direction of the earth's rotation.

     The pictures are not due to my inevitable Leica.  It wasn't even there.  Cindy's I-phone did the trick.  Thanks Cindy.  As an additional interesting side note, Cindy and I were both interviewed by a NY Times reporter.  The reference didn't appear in the print version (yet?), but it was in a campaign blog.