A Mitt Romney supporter, Chad Schmitz from Granger, Iowa, e-mails from the straw poll, with some photos. He writes:
You must realize Mitt is dominating this event. Yellow shirt means you are with Mitt, and a significant number like me didn’t wear the yellow shirt. There are yellow shirts everywhere. And what caught me is many brought the whole family–kids and strollers everywhere with yellow shirts.
Look at all the yellow in the Hilton photos….
The wow for me was after I left Hilton when Mitt was finished speaking, I was looking fwd to finally eating (food tent was busy all morning)…and found the food tent was STILL packed…..with all those yellow shirts still in Hilton! There were still hundreds of Mitt people outside. I had to wait in line for food, and sit in the sun by the tent (see photo of Mitt’s food tent packed). Dare I say Mitt could pull in 40% at this thing?
Brownback had a good crowd. From what I saw, Huck and Tommy did OK. I did shake Duncan Hunter’s hand and talked to Elvis at his nearly empty tent. A number of yellow shirts from Romney were getting some of Duncan’s ice cream at the time.
Ron Paul had volunteers everywhere holding signs, but at 11am I did not see hardly anyone in his tent area. Could be that Ron Paul is all volunteers, and it is quite possible that Romney has more volunteers helping with this event (dark blue shirts) than Ron Paul has in total attendees.
The Fred Thompson table is busy. I picked up some stickers for my friends who like him. It was busy every time I walked by. The buttons disappeared fast.
Yes, everyone who has a clue heard Mitt say “corn and green beans,” and then thought “does he know they are soybeans, not ‘green beans?’”
Every ag person was relieved that he corrected himself–the fact he knows the difference, and knows that saying “green beans” in Iowa may come back to haunt him, shows how smart this guy really is.
No one in ag says green beans unless they mean the ones you buy in a can. You say ‘beans’ or ‘green soybeans’ but never ‘green beans’ so you don’t confuse ignorant Northeasterners 🙂
And in response to a Brownback staffer Corner post he e-mails:
FYI, the Brownback people had to go right thru the Mitt area to get their people into Hilton, so they regulary held signs and walked thru a sea of yellow to get their people thru.
If there was any sort of chanting on the other camps within the Romney area, they would be swarmed by romney signs and people chanting (or shouting them down if you will). I saw this when some loud Ron Paul people came near the Romney area when Mitt was just off his stage, and volunteers ran with signs to deter the Paul folks.
I would guess either a Mitt person over-reacted, or a BB supporter was a little loud in the case you posted. There was not much tension that I saw, and everyone was friendly to me when I walked around with a yellow short over my shoulder.