How crowded is Tampa with big-time Republicans this week? So crowded that if you’re not careful, Karl Rove will crash your breakfast.
This happened to The Examiner staff this morning during an interview over coffee at a downtown hotel with Texas Republican Senate candidate Ted Cruz and two of his staffers. Halfway through the interview, Karl Rove walked into the room, spotted Cruz and made a bee-line for our table.
“I have never seen a more boring group of people in my life than this crowd,” Rove loudly announced. He then wanted to know what everybody thought of Cruz’s speech the night before, noting that Cruz strode the stage rather than using a podium.
“It was like a televangelist or something,” replied The Examiner’s Tim Carney.
Not so, replied Rove, patting Cruz on the shoulder: “It was not like a televangelist. It was like a man in command of the stage and the crowd. A man in the moment.”
Cruz said he was just happy that he didn’t fall into the hole where the retractable podium had been.
“When I came out it was still lowered and there was a hole right behind me. People asked me, ‘What were you thinking when you walked out there?’ I said I was thinking, I hope I don’t break my neck,” he said.
Rove then praised the Examiner for its “diversity” (there were three white male staffers at the table) and then he left.
Throughout it all, National Review columnist Jonah Goldberg sat at the table next to us hunched over his keyboard, probably wondering when we would quiet down.
