Posted on 12/12/2009 10:43:28 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
SANDPOINT — Local Democrats turned out Thursday to demonstrate that not everybody in Bonner County buys what Sarah Palin is selling.
“We just wanted to show that there were some people who don’t think Sarah Palin is the greatest thing since sliced bread,” said Laura Bry, chair of the Bonner County Democrat Central Committee.
Bry was among a dozen like-minded folks who gathered at the Sandpoint Business & Events Center to express their viewpoint. Some carried signs, the tone of which covered a broad spectrum of sentiment.
One sign read, “Thank God You Lost” and was adorned with a smiley face and a cross, while another read, “Stop Making Things Up.”
Bry, who carried the latter sign, said she went to the former vice presidential candidate’s book-signing event to peacefully protest, not to pick a fight.
“We worked on being polite and not getting into verbal arguments,” said Bry.
Not that there weren’t some harsh words, though.
Some Palin supporters, fresh from meeting a woman they deeply admire after standing in line all day, reacted strongly to the presence of Palin opponents.
There was some nasty jeering and some verbal confrontations.
“We didn’t really want to be anti-Palin,” Bry said of her segment of the protest group. “My best friend thinks Sarah Palin is just an awesome woman. I don’t want to be disrespectful to my neighbors and I don’t want to be disrespectful to Sarah Palin either. I just don’t agree with her on almost anything.”
Jenni Roberts-Martin said some of the Palin supporters’ vitriol was directed squarely at her and her children, but has no regrets about exercising her civil rights.
“I sincerely hope that’s the lesson my children take away from last night — that if you stand quietly and refuse to be baited, free speech is a valuable, inalienable right,” Roberts-Martin said in an e-mail to The Daily Bee.
Both Bry and Roberts-Martin praised Sandpoint Fire Chief Robert Tyler and Police Chief Mark Lockwood for smoothing some of the ruffled feathers.
Lockwood said it only took a straightforward reminder to ease tensions.
“We made it very plan: The woman that’s in there signing books is a staunch advocate of having these people out here and letting them exercise their right to do this and that pretty much diffused it,” he said.
Lockwood added that he was pleased with how the event ultimately unfolded and said there isn’t much he would do differently. He said one of the bigger factors of the evening was Palin’s deep roots in Bonner County.
“The big factor was her family knew so many people,” he said.
Hmmm...where are the pics of the other protesters? Me thinketh the dozen was an exaggerated number. Sounds to me like this little protest was a bust. That in itself should have been the headline for this desperate article.
Well if she didn’t want to be rude then why carry a sign that said “Thank God you lost”? They are so clueless and crude that they still try to play the victim when they are the bully! What tools!
(protesters: “a dozen”)=the reporters friends and family!
An earlier report put their number at half a dozen, 4 adults and 2 kids.
That would require more effort than most Dims(I know) could muster up.
A democrat friend of my wife and I once called me up and gave me a sermon about being more careful about the people I hung around with. Meaning Republicans of course. I took her advice seriously and have had nothing to do with her since.
What she really meant to say.
Yes, and this is further underscored by the quotes from the police chief, which certainly do make it seem that Palin is well-known and well-liked in the area.
Bonner County went for McCain-Palin by 17 points.
(Which, to be sure, is substantially less than the 25% by which the ticket carried Idaho as a whole, but still, it's hardly what I'd call a Democrat stronghold.)
"Don’t get me wrong though — I agree with you regarding the reporter’s bias completely."
Well, let's not jump to conclusions. The article certainly appears favorable to the protesters, and I asked the question of whether the reporter has an axe to grind, bue the fact is that I don't know this reporter at all, I don't know his history, I don't know anything about him other than that he's written this one article. I'm unwilling to condemn him on that basis.
But I completely agree with you on the joys of watching bias backfire. It's one of the pleasures of being a Palin-watcher... to see the legacy media so rabidly focused on destroying her that they don't realize they're having the opposite effect. (All Palin fans should check out what she did to William Shatner on Conan O'Brien. It's epic, an instant classic.)
It was a gag, and Shatner was certainly in on it.Which doesn't change the fact that Sarah was dynamite on camera, cooly reciting whole paragraphs of Shatner's book from memory. She was in her element.
Oh my but you are touchy. I suppose you were the thirteenth one? When you are divided 70 ways, it is hard to coalesce.
They don't know what it is!
Your post makes no sense.
That’s a very good question, Lion Den Dan!
WTF??
For starters, yes.
FTA: “’.... free speech is a valuable, inalienable right,’ Roberts-Martin said in an e-mail to The Daily Bee.”
Only when her side is exercising that right. She would be among the first to scream for censorship and criminal charges against anyone who had the audacity to disagree with or be critical of her views and agenda.
I hate the left. I really do.
That must have been quite a challenge since that sort of behavior doesn't come naturally to pinkos.
>”I just don’t agree with her on almost anything.”<
At this point, someone should ask exactly WHAT they don’t agree with.
Liberals love proclamations, but they can’t comprehend details. It’s a shame that most of the ignorant Voting population of this country have the same affliction.
Neither do you
LDD, 70th's original post was not directed to you. He was talking to the protesters. Read it again in that context.
70th, read LDD's reply to you in the context of he thought your post was talking to him.
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