But talking to at least two disinterested people, there were no chants of Beltway! Beltway! to Jay Footlik. One was standing near Jay and his campaign manager and says nothing out of the ordinary happened and most folks were talking politely with Simon and Jay.
To be clear, I’m supporting Dan, but I don’t think we need to be attacking people for things that don’t appear to have happened or at least weren’t noticeable to others who were there.
And for the record, Jay has come out strongly for ending the war in Iraq.
I’m kind of baffled by this kerfluffle.
The reports were correct for the most part. I cannot verify the “beltway” chants but the rest is accurate. I came home from the event in the mainroom, to emails from those in the outer overflow. And this morning received several calls, detailing the events exactly as written and before I had a chance to read them myself, directly from the sources themselves. That isn’t to say that they were rude or overly noisy, when confronting Jay – in fact, one of them told me that she was surprised to see herself being blogged about- and that someone must have been listening to their conversation, which implies that they were not intended to embarrass Jay but were real expressions of their frustrations with him. This was unscripted and happened because the group was prevented from entering the main room -the women who spoke to Jay were meeting and speaking with him for the first time- and he didn’t make any good impressions, turning his back on one of them as soon as she said something he didn’t like (the question on where he voted in the presidential election)
And he’s NOT solidly against the war. He’s said enough conflicting things that people I know do not trust him. He’s already being forced to walk the same line as Kirk and people have had enough of that kind of duplicity. Oh, and the report is that Jay was not really civil, and went negative on Dan. Way to win hearts and minds!
i guess i should have come here yesterday.
i completely agree, there were no chants of “beltway, beltway!” to jay footlik:
“one seals supporter asked footlik’s manager where footlik voted last year (footlik has maintained his voter registration at his mother’s house in the 9th congressional district since he left home to go to college). but the real fireworks exploded when footlik’s manager tried to
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
argue about it. BELTWAY! BELTWAY! went the chant.”