How to lose friends and alienate supporters

Sarah Palin had an appearance here this week, at the Larimer County Fairgrounds Budweiser Events Center. The local paper made a fuss over a long line of people at Republican HQ waiting to get free tickets. The print media and Denver TV stations covered her appearance Monday.

There was a little problem, though -- the venue holds 7,200, and rumor has it that as many as 15,000 tickets were passed out. The McCain campaign says it passed out 11,000 tickets. Initial plans were to admit 9,000, diverting 2,000 of those people to an overflow area at an adjacent bulding.

On site, some people waited as much as two hours or more, and never got in the building. Several thousand people were left waiting outside in the cold, despite hundreds of empty seats inside.

There was confusion between local law enforcement, the fire department and the Secret Service. There is mention in the Fort Collins newspaper today that as many as 500 people were let into the building without being screened or going through metal detectors -- scary.

Of course, the fire marshall is blaming the Secret Service, and vice versa, for the decision to stop admitting people.

For McCain/Palin supporters, this fiasco is not enough to cause any doubt as to how to vote; but I have to imagine that anyone who wanted to go and see Palin as part of their decision-making process and who did not get in has to be less than impressed.