Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour quoted the head of FedEx when he told the hundreds gathered at 8 this morning at Parkrose High School that, “The main thing, is the main thing, is the main thing.” I always thought Pat Riley was the originator of that saying, but, either way, the meaning is simple: Get out and vote and tell your friends and don’t let anything deter you.

Photo by the WSJ

On stage with Barbour were Oregon Congressman Greg Walden, former Republican Oregon Governor, Vic Atiyeh, Chris Dudley and his family, and Chris Christie and his daughter Sarah. They were flanked by dozens of Republican activists, including the Chairman of the Party, Bob Tiernan.

Photo by the WSJ

The hundreds gathered at Parkrose High School were treated to Chris Christie-isms including, “If you don’t vote for Dudley, I’ll come back and go all Jersey on you!”  It was met with laughs. Christie told the folks gathered that he knew he was ‘preaching to the choir,’ but as a pastor told him, ‘the choir sings and I want you to go out and sing to your friends and family for Chris Dudley.’
[Added from WSJ article on the visit here] Christie says his job for the party is to go to blue states and light a fire under candidates. As he told a Wall Street Journal reporter today, 

“My job is to give them hope that they can win, and to give them a preview of what it will look like once we do.”

I’ll post pictures later. I’m off to the Tea Party Convention in Hillsboro.
As Peggy Noonan says in her piece in the Wall Street Journal today,

On the other side, not only is a big Republican wave coming, but a rough coalition seems to be forming. It is the coalition that did not come together in 2006 to save Congress for the GOP, and did not come together in ’08 to elect John McCain. The tea party saved the Republican Party by, among other things, re-energizing it. But it’s also becoming clear the tea party did so without turning off the center.

This is news. Six months ago the common wisdom was that the tea party was going to scare independent voters and make them run screaming from the tent. “There was an awful man in an Uncle Sam hat and a woman talking about repealing some amendment. I can’t take it, Harry!”

But the center doesn’t appear to be scared. Maybe it doesn’t scare easy. Maybe getting scared is what happens next time, not this time. Or, my hunch, maybe the center, some of whose members have expressed a certain antipathy or standoffishness toward the tea party, simply doesn’t care that it feels a certain antipathy or standoffishness. Because such feelings are beside the point right now, a self-indulgence suited to less crisis-laden times. And we are in crisis. Our spending is ruinous, the demands of government are too great. It doesn’t matter if you like the style of those who want to turn it around, join them and try to turn it around. One of the things Rep. Paul Ryan says has seeped into the electorate: We have only a short time to fix things, we have to move now. [emphasis added]

The WSJ did two blog posts about the event today here and here.