New Haven Independent

People who made the trek down the Merritt Parkway from the New Haven area needed no convincing that McCain was their man both in the GOP primary and the general election, and they had come to support their man. That was not the case with the scores of protesters who lined the sidewalk outside Sacred Heart University’s bucolic campus and the half-dozen or so protesters who made their antiwar views clear as McCain was speaking. (Click here for related story.)

The pep rally theme was carried through with a band playing mostly military airs including “Anchors Aweigh” for McCain’s Navy service. There were repeated mentions of Super Sunday and the Super Bowl and Super Tuesday, the day when 22 states will hold primaries or caucuses. ANd there were air guns shooting confetti and streamers over the audience when McCain left the podium.

The crowd, placed at about 2,000 by a university official, was predominantly white, but of all ages. They were there for the most part to back their man and support his friend, Sen.Lieberman, who was greeted with thunderous applause nearly as loud as for the candidate himself.

Lieberman whipped up the audience, saying political parties ae important, but the nation was more important. He quoted Winston Churchill, the former British prime minister, as saying courage is the most important quality in a leader.

Along with Lieberman, who accompanied by his wife Hadassah, the opening acts included U.S. Rep. Chris Shays, former U.S. Reps. Rob Simmons and Rep. Nancy Johnson, Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele, South Carolina U.S. Sen. Lindsay Graham, and Texas’ ex-U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm, McCain’s wife, Cindy, took over, extolling the candidate’s virtues as a humanitarian, then introducing her husband.

McCain came out firing off one-liners and introducing his 95-year-old mother, Roberta McCain, even telling lawyer jokes and convict jokes. One was about a former governor who was in prison and to whom a fellow inmate remarked that the food in the jail was better “when you were governor.” McCain perhaps forgot that Connecticut’s former Republican governor had served time.

When he finally got serious, McCain promised the enthusiastic if not overly loud audience that he would veto every pork-barrel bill that crossed his desk. He said he would get Osama bin Laden if “I have to follow him to the very gates of Hell.” Following his conservative agenda, he also pledged to appoint judges who follow strict construction of the Constitution and “won’t legislate from the bench.”

He thanked the many veterans in the audience for their service and pledged to give every veteran a plastic card for routine doctor’s office visits to “the doctor of their choice.” He also said the Veterans Administration would have to be enlarged to assure good treatment for returning wounded from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He called radical Islamic fundamentalism the “transcendent issue” of the day and said the nation owed a debt of gratitude to President Bush for there not being another attack like Sept. 11, 2001. He also pledged to made the Bush tax cuts permanent.

McCain seemed thrown by the first protester’s shouts. He stood silent for nearly a minute, then said this happens from time to time. He added that the protesters have a right to speak, as the protester was escorted out. He kept going during other protesters’ shouts.

John O’Connell, a property manager from Milford, called McCain the best alternative of the surviving candidates. He called Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton his last choice.

Also in the standing throng was Bryan Anderson of West Haven, who came with his son, Tyler, 16, a junior at Notre Dame High School in West Haven. The senior Anderson said he backed McCain for the most part. Tyler, who plans to study political science in college, said “I just like him” and cited his military experience.

McCain did not take questions from the audience. He gave a short press conference into a microphone that didn’t seem to be connected to anything within hearing of the press corps, which numbered well over 100.

The Pitt gym was divided in thirds, with a few dozen bleacher seats and hundreds of people standing within shouting distance of the podium, The middle third was press territory, with risers for television cameras. Behind these were people sitting in more bleachers far away from the action, some of whom complained afterward that they could neither see nor hear.