ST. PAUL — Knee high in red, white and blue balloons, Kenya Cox is one of the few Kansans who weren’t entirely electric about Sen. John McCain’s speech. She said she still has questions about how McCain will make all the talk into reality. After nearly a week of convention speeches and red state whooping, she said she needs to see the fine print.
“There’s been a lot of tall talk,” the alternate delegate from Wichita said. “I’m not interested in talking. I’m interested in walking.” And she said Kansans in the district she’s running in in Wichita know the nation needs more than speeches. “The only thing I’m convinced of is that we have a whole hell of a lot to do,” she said.
That’s about the roughest reaction a reporter could find wandering among popping balloons, throngs of reporters and a fleeting crowd of delegates who are ready to get their party on through the rest of this final night of the National Republican Convention.
Susan Estes, a delegate from Wichita, said McCain drew a clear distinction between himself and Sen. Barack Obama. “He wasn’t being vague and he wasn’t telling everyone what they wanted to hear,” she said. That includes, she suspects, some teachers. “He lost the teachers union vote,” she said. “But he won my mommy vote.” She said that’s because McCain sent a message encouraging parents that they have a choice in where to send their kids to school.
With the huge smile of a week nearly complete, Kansas Republican Party Chairman Kris Kobach looked on toward the CNN set on the convention floor and gave a sharp partisan jab at Obama. “Barack Obama is a work of fiction,” he said, noting the two autobiographies Obama penned by age 45. “John McCain is a work of history.”
Rep. Todd Tiahrt, of Wichita, swung too. “Obama is kind of a show horse,” he said. “He’s a work horse.”
Of course, this is the Republican National Convention and the words will fade as the campaigns move on toward November. But as the buses set to depart, Kansas Republicans here in St. Paul are pretty much all smiles.