I’m still in D.C. but didn’t make it over to the president’s early morning appearance this morning. Here’s the White House pool reporter write-up about what he had to say about John McCain and more:
The president didn’t offer an explicit endorsement of Sen. John McCain, but referred to him as a “conservative,” giving a stamp of approval and not-too-subtle hint to activists at the Conservative Political Action Conference that they should rally around the presumptive GOP nominee.
“We’ve had good debates, and soon we’ll have a nominee who will carry a conservative banner into this election and beyond… It’s an important election,” Bush said, without mentioning McCain by name. But it was obvious he wasn’t referring to Huckabee.
The early morning speech was in the same ballroom that greeted McCain a day earlier with skepticism and some hostility. The contrast today was huge. President Bush with greeted with near ecstatic thrill. It was hard to imagine that the 1,200 or more folks crammed into the room had been up for hours staking out seats for the 7:15 a.m. speech – because they spent so little time sitting.
There were cheers when an aide placed the presidential seal on the podium. Cheers when the binder holding the president’s speech was put in place. And chants of “Four more years!” when Sen. Mitch McConnell introduced Bush, and a few more times during the speech. McConnell sat on his left, American Conservative Union president David Keene on his right.
It was one ovation after another as Bush ran through red meat issues: making tax cuts permanent, extending the surveillance law, winning in Iraq, defeating terrorism, limiting stem cell research, upholding life, appointing conservative judges, refusing to seek international “permission slips” or an OK from Code Pink or MoveOn.org before protecting American interests.
However the rest of America feels, the approval rating in this crowd approached 100 percent. No resentment apparent for the fact that his tour of tornado damage in the South forced an unusually early start time.