AlanBarber.Org
Tuesday, April 06, 2004
OCRF 2004 Recap
Been a bit busy lately. I thought my computer graphics project was due Thursday but it turns out it was due today. So I spent yesterday working on that. I did get it done and turned in so everything is ok.The OCRF (Ohio College Republican Federation) Convention was a lot of fun over the weekend. Well the actual convention was a bit of a bust but everyone pretty much expected that.
The morning events were all canceled. The first speaker, State Representative Kevin Dewine, never showed up at the event to speak. No one knows what happen because they booked him and had even called the day before to verify he would be coming. The other speaker Eric Hoplin, College Republican National Chairman, had some plane problems and was running late. Representative Dewine never showed up but Mr Hoplin did get there late and they let him speak at the Dinner.
So anyways, we went to lunch. It was a catered deal with fancy pizzas and vegetable platters. It was ok food but nothing spectacular. My girlfriend and I decided to just go back to the hotel and hang out until the keynote speaker Fred Barnes later that day. It was the usual stuff like; grassroots forum, student activism, liberal bias on campus, etc. These are all talks and events we saw at CPAC in Washington D.C. and talk about at our meetings every week. It's all stuff heard before so we didn't feel like sitting around for 4 hours.
At four pm we headed over to the place where they were holding the keynote speaker Fred Barnes. We got seats in the second row right in front of the podium. We were like ten feet from where he would be standing. It's always great to get nice close seats that way you never have to worry about your view being blocked by some tall person or having trouble hearing the speaker because of sound system problems.
Mr. Barnes finally came in and gave his talk. It was good but nothing inspiring or memorable. He talked about a few different topics including the war in Iraq, Afghanistan and the war on terror. He had spent some time over in Iraq so he shared a few quick stories and voiced his views on how things were going. He spoke a bit about the November elections. How the media spends too much time and energy focusing on how every move and action that The President or those running for president make will affect the election. Finally, he spoke about a new study some professor at Harvard was working on. The professor had come up with 6 metrics to better measure how good a president is. He covered each of the 6 areas and compared how well Bush, Kerry, Dean, etc would rank. The result was that Bush comes out ahead and actually shows as being a very good President.
Afterwards, Mr. Barnes did a short Q and A session. Nothing to really talk about there but he did make a few funny comments about the news industry and managed to poke a jab or two at the Democrats.
They held a dinner afterwards and I managed to get my picture taken with Mr. Barnes. He's a very nice friendly guy and stayed around at the dinner and chatted with many people. Again the dinner was catered and pretty boring. They had made a big deal about the dinner being a black tie event but that no one was expected to actually wear a tux or fancy dress. I came in expecting a fancy sit down dinner and such. Nothing fancy mind you, just like rubber chicken. However, it was just a get in line, serve yourself, pasta dinner. There were a few different types of pasta and sauces, salad and strawberries and some type of cream pastries for dessert.
After eating Eric Hoplin spoke a bit about things we need to do for November, then State Congressman Tom Brinkman spoke about how we the new generation of Republicans have an important job to maintain the country and keep our core beliefs, etc, etc. The new officers were sworn in for the OCRF and they gave out awards for best club, etc. Then that was it. We all headed back to the hotel to get out of our fancy clothes and have some real fun.
Some of the people left for home because they wanted to get back that night. Others went out to a local bar where there was a party. My girlfriend and I just stayed at the hotel as usual. We put on our PJs and crawled into bed to watch TV and cuddle. I don't care if you call us boring. We're both college students that have busy lives and live at home with our parents. You can see with those facts it's basically impossible for us to ever have any time alone. So this weekend was a great opportunity for us to take advantage of. All right! You can all get your heads out of the gutter right now!
Anyhoo, so that's the weekend summary. Below are two pictures of Fred Barnes but you can find all the pictures that I took (well the ones that turned out good) in the Images & File Gallery. Just check out the OCRF 2004 section.
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on 04/06/2004 at 06:51 PM