You ain't alone, Ray....
Across the U.S., some Republicans are turning from Bush
Elisabeth Rosenthal NYT
Monday, February 23, 2004
BEACHWOOD, Ohio In the 2000 election, Bill Flanagan, a semiretired newspaper worker, happily voted for George W. Bush. But now, shaking his head, he vows, "Never again."
"The combination of lies and boys coming home in body bags is just too awful," Flanagan said, drinking coffee and reading newspapers at the local mall. "I could vote for Kerry," he said, referring to Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, a leading contender for the Democratic nomination. "I could vote for any Democrat unless he's a real dummy."
Flanagan is hardly alone, even though polls show that an overwhelming majority of Republicans who supported Bush in 2000 will do so again in November. In dozens of random interviews around the country, independents and Republicans who say they voted for Bush in 2000 now say they intend to vote for the Democratic presidential candidate this year.
That could change, of course, once the Bush campaign begins pumping millions of dollars into advertising and making the case for his re-election.
But even as Democratic and Republican strategists and pollsters warned that a shift could be temporary, the shift could prove consequential in a year when each side is focused on turning out its most loyal voters.
"As the president's job rating has fallen, his Democratic supporters have pulled away first, then the independents, and now we're starting to see a bit of erosion among the Republicans, who used to support him pretty unanimously," said Evans Witt, the chief executive of Princeton Survey Research Associates. "If 10 to 15 percent of Republicans do not support him anymore, that is not trivial for Bush's re-election."
Matthew Dowd, the Bush campaign's chief strategist, suggested that no one in the White House was worried about Bush's losing much of his base. He said polls continued to show that the president was enjoying the support of 90 percent of Republicans.
In the interviews, many of those potential crossover voters said they supported the invasion of Iraq but had come to see the continuing involvement there as too costly and without clear objectives.
Many also said they believed that the Bush administration had not been honest about its reasons for invading Iraq and were concerned about the failure to discover unconventional weapons. Some of these people described themselves as fiscal conservatives who were alarmed by deficit spending and job losses at home. Many are shocked to find themselves switching sides.
George Meagher, a Republican who founded and now runs the American Military Museum in Charleston, South Carolina, said he threw his "heart and soul" into the Bush campaign four years ago. He organized veterans to attend events like the campaign's kickoff speech at the Citadel. He even has photographs of himself and his wife with Bush.
"Given the outcome and how dissatisfied I am with the administration, it's hard to think about now," he said. "People like me, we're all choking a bit at not supporting the president. But when I think about 500 people killed and what we've done to Iraq, and what we've done to our country, I mean, we're already $2 trillion in debt again."
The New York Times
iht.com
But then, Dubya blurted it himself: "I'm a war President"... Sounds like, from now on, Americans long for peace --and a "peace president". |
