Illinois Republicans are headed home after a week in Tampa where Thursday night Mitt Romney accepted his party’s nomination for President.
The week didn’t begin as planned. The threat that tropical storm Isaac would bludgeon Tampa Bay led organizers to cancel the first day of the convention. The early forecasts were off and the storm’s menace hit hard elsewhere along the Gulf, but it merely brushed by Tampa. Speaking Thursday morning at the final state meeting of the Illinois delegation John Sununu, the former Governor of New Hamshire, likewise floated the idea that political forecasters would be off with their predictions about President Barack Obama’s home state:
Illinois Republicans who were revved up by the idea were even more so after Romney's acceptance speech. All evening, speakers with connections to Romney took to the stage. Olympic athletes … business associates … and members of his church … sought to boost the public’s image of him, and to tarnish President Obama’s. Even filmmaker and actor Clint Eastwood got in on the act. But at the end of the night, it was time for Romney to do it for himself. As he strode to the stage, he walked right by Illinois delegates, shaking some of their hands. And then proceeded to make his case. A case that Obama had not fulfilled his promise of hope, and change. But that he, Mitt Romney, could.
Illinios delegate Eloise Gercon, of Chicago, who describes herself as a Hispanic, Jewish, an immigrant. She says Romeny did great, great.
Delegate Kay Ferris, who’s from western Illinois - Whiteside County - says she most appreciated Romney’s foreign policies. Romney barbed Obama for giving Russia’s president too much flexibility and for not appropriately dealing with the threat of a nuclear Iran, and for relaxing sanctions on Cuba. On the domestic front, Urbana mother Karen Miller says she liked what she heard about Romney’s commitment to creating jobs.Critics immediately called Romney’s plan to create 12 million jobs safe, conservative... that’s how many economists believe will be created anyway. Miller says it hasn’t happened in the past, not under the rules we’re living in now, she says it’s not going to happen if we continue along the same path.
Speaking of jobs, Delegate Jay Bergman, who’s President of the PETCO Petroleum Corporation in Hinsdale – an oil and natural gas producer is supportive of Romney’s plans to make North American energy independent by 2020. He says that’s something that’s a big thing, it’ll create jobs, it’ll reduce our dependency on the Saudi’ and others for whom we now are giving all of our money to buy their oil.” His wife, Lori, says it exceeded her every expectation... as she stood waist-deep in red, white and blue balloons that poured down from the ceiling.
Republicans are pumped with excitement now, but November’s a long way off. And their metaphorical balloons could burst well before then. Next week President Obama makes his case to the public, at the Democratic National convention in Charlotte.
