by Cesar Vargas | March 8, 2012
We had travelled long and hard… and then travelled longer and harder, scrambling to barely make the Bolt bus. We made our way into a hotel in Boston after a few hours on a Bolt Bus, our bags seemingly shrinking as we realized how little we needed on each trip. We were packing the room again, this time there was 5 of us in a 2 person room, 2 to a bed with one on the floor in a rotation.
We had managed to find our way over to yet another Romney rally, this one in Copley Square. When we went through registration, Eddie was patted down by a cop, but the rest of us got in without this treatment. Good thing, too, because Erika had a few VETO ROMNEY signs hidden on her person.
This rally was different than the others: the crowd was smaller than in every other state and way richer: you couldn’t find a single baseball cap in the room, and the only people who didn’t look like they could have been inside a Barbie Dream Mansion or 1950’s government propaganda film at any point in their existence. The Republican crowd largely agreed that the crowds shrinking was due to America’s short attention span and this year’s dragged out primary between cheers for a few Romney victories on the screen detailing Super Tuesday’s primaries.
The people within the rally were much more homogenous, with nearly everyone under 30 wearing a navy-blue blazer, beige slacks and a button down shirt that was the characature of college Republicans. Each of the women over 30 wore the same tightly-knit hair, pants suit and pear necklaces that immediately summoned memories of Laura Bush, while every woman under 30 seemed to try to look over 30.
It was an entire rally of college Republicans, many of whom had never graduated, but all of whom were dead-set on cheering for their team. Interestingly enough, they all despised the SUPERPAC’s, but they were still all at the rally for the most SUPERPAC-esque, privileged guys in politics.
I started a conversation with an older man, roughly 50, in a sweater that made him look vaguely like Mr. Rogers. His glasses were “neat” if any word describes them, hanging on his ears under his salt and pepper hair. He had made his debut in my life speaking about the perversion of Bill Clinton, and how he had dared to wrap his arm all the way around his friend’s waist and onto her hip for some photo. His wife seemed like little more than an accessory, and any attempts at conversation yielded little more than laughter. I asked him about what excited him about Romney while a fat guy in a suit raised his hands behind us, egging them on in a way rarely seen outside of pep rallies as they cheered like an orderly mob.
“He’s got the conservative credentials” he said. Our conversation on Romney’s credentials quickly broke down into a team mentality against the Democrats. “How old are you son?” he asked in a slightly condescending, yet oddly comforting tone. When I answered 28, he said “I’ve been around a bit longer than you, and let me tell you, Obama is the worst President we’ve ever had.” Ordinarily, I would have crapped myself and instantly broken out into a comparison between him and Bush, but I reflected on how badly the arguments I had had at other primary rallies had gone, and found myself just nodding my head. “He wants to put everyone on welfare and foodstamps.” Sometimes, not always, but sometimes, it’s painful to watch this sort of ignorance on a fully-grown man.
Running back and forth was a guy carrying roughly 3/4 the weight of Limbaugh, throwing his arms in the air, facing a crowd in some bleachers and leading them in a cheer of “WE WANT MITT!” 3/4’s of Limbaugh was actually fairly impressive, ignoring the sweat at his hairline or his nigh-comical girth as he quickly bounced from one end of the room to another, arms flailing about like a cheerleader on crack. The crowd was as enthusiastic as always to cheer for its own team, screaming back in sync while a beauty in a blue dress sang. There was a certain irony that the other vocalist was a black dude, singing to an almost entirely white audience “Play that Funky Music, White Boy.”
Finally, Mitt himself came out to the roar of applause and cheers of “WE WANT MITT” that I had become accustomed to. As the room filled up we were ushered into the bleachers, and Erika and Cesar waited for their moment. Romney gave mostly the same speech he always did, slightly different now that he wasn’t reciting America the Beautiful anymore. Other than that, it was the same “Obama lost our AAA credit rating, I will restore our AAA credit rating! Obama forced through Obamacare, I will repeal Obamacare!” and other vague, empty promises that politicians are so well known for. “GO MITT GO!!!” his mob roared while he talked about how he slashed Massachusetts’ debt as Governor.
When the crowd died down between sentences, Erika whipped out the signs, and soon she and Cesar were chanting “VETO ROMNEY NOT THE DREAM ACT.” Like every other time, they were very quickly drowned out by the pro-Romney crowd within around 5-10 seconds. A guy sitting next to Cesar tried to quiet him down politely, but then realized that Cesar was bent on getting himself kicked out and let it be. Within 30 seconds or so a tall Romney supporter stepped in front of Cesar, while another grabbed for his sign. In his rush, he tore the signs into several pieces as he pulled them out of Cesar and Erika’s hands and escorted them out. After another minute or so, Celso, Eddie and Sergio started to chant, prompting security to run back to the same spot to kick them out as well.