Former gossip writer Lloyd Grove on Romney’s event in Virginia yesterday… Hundreds of voters—the great majority of them white, and a good many of them white-haired—were baking and reddening on the boiling asphalt Tuesday afternoon outside the headquarters of EIT LLC, a medical electronics instrument manufacturer in Sterling, Va., waiting for the Secret Service to process them through the magnetometers so they could cheer for the Republican nominee-designate. Indeed, so many neatly dressed, well-behaved Mitt Romney supporters showed up—something over 500—that a fastidious fire marshal decreed that dozens would not be admitted into the cavernous, air-conditioned company warehouse where the putative future president was to speak, and instead had them stand in the sweltering sun to listen over the public address system. Which they did. Happily. Virginia might be a toss-up state—whose 13 electoral votes were carried handily by Barack Obama and Joe Biden last time around—but this prosperous corner of Loudon County, a short drive from Washington, D.C., seemed, at least for the moment, like Romney country.”
The kicker: “ ‘I was really impressed,’ said Ed Rager, a 67-year-old former human-resources executive who retired from Mobil Oil before the merger with Exxon. ‘I liked what he had to say about college grads who can’t find jobs and the national debt. I feel like we really have a leader. I’m fired up.’ And ready to go? ‘I don’t think I’d put it that way.’”
“A representative for Donald Trump says that the reality television star will host a $50,000-a-head fundraiser with Mitt Romney this week. But the Romney campaign isn’t so sure,” the Washington Post reported Tuesday about today’s fundraiser. “The presumptive Republican presidential candidate’s campaign reported Tuesday afternoon there would be no meeting with Trump this week. Minutes later, the Trump representative confirmed the event, which is expected to bring at least 50 people paying $50,000 each to the home of stock investor Martin Zweig in Manhattan’s Pierre Hotel.”
