Election Day Prophecy

The backwoods folk are beginning to doubt Bush

The American humourist Will Rogers once described his political position thus: “I belong to no organised party. I am a Democrat.” It captured the undisciplined, chaotic, often hilarious internecine battles that have plagued the party.

The astonishing aspect of the current intense election campaign in the United States is that this time the roles are reversed. On the eve of an election it is the usually disciplined, on-message, obedient Republican party that is at war with itself. The polls don’t help. They suggest an imminent drubbing, and the newspapers and blogosphere have been full of what are termed “pre-mortems” or “precriminations”.

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The intellectual titan of American conservatism, William F Buckley, has called the Iraq war a failure, and attributed it to the lack of a coherent conservative governing philosophy in the Bush White House.

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Most critically, it is the rural heartland that is beginning to question Bush and the war:

* First, they trusted him as a man of God. Then they blamed the media for distorting reality in Iraq.

* Then their patriotism kicked in as the president urged them to “stay the course”.

* But now this segment of the population, people who have disproportionately sent their sons and daughters to fight in the bloodsoaked
streets of Ramadi and Falluja and Baghdad, show signs of revolt. If Bush loses these voters — or if they are too demoralised to vote at all — the omens are truly dark for the Republicans.

The party’s strategy, after all, has long been not to persuade moderate, suburban America, but to register, organise and mobilise millions of rural evangelical voters who had not voted in large numbers since the 1920s. Issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage brought these voters to the polls and made the difference. Without them in Ohio in 2004, John Kerry would now be president. The Republicans also gerrymandered their constituencies to ensure these voters were spread around enough to provide narrow margins of victories across the country. The victories were always close ones, nonetheless.

Until recently the rural evangelicals have stuck with the president, in part to honour the fallen, and out of admirable patriotism and trust.

It is hard to believe that your son or daughter died or is permanently crippled for a bungled cause. But if the facade cracks, if these rural voters begin to believe they have been misled, then the rock-solid patriotic support could become something else. It would not, in my judgment, fade into indifference. It could turn into rage.

That hasn’t happened yet. But you can feel it beginning. When you add to it the libertarian Republicans, alienated by the religious right, the worries for Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney mount. Then there are the fiscal conservatives appalled by the massive spending and borrowing, and the social conservatives who suspect the Republican leadership of covering up pederasty in its own ranks in the Mark

Foley affair, and the neoconservatives who believe that their war was never given enough troops or resources to succeed. Put it all together and you have a party that is beginning to resemble a circular firing squad nine days before critical mid-terms.

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There is, of course, a great justice in this. In many ways the Bush administration and Republican Congress have abandoned principled conservatism and deserve to be punished by conservatives more than liberals. When they took over in 2000, the long-term fiscal liability of the federal government was $20 trillion. It now stands at $43 trillion. They have increased government spending at a faster rate than any Democratic Congress since the 1930s. They have generated deficits after four years of strong growth. This kind of spending has made sleaze and de facto bribery inevitable.

The number of lobbyists in Washington has doubled in five years. As for pork barrel spending, a simple comparison tells the tale. In 1985, Ronald Reagan vetoed a motorway-construction bill because lawmakers had stuffed into it 150 pet projects for their constituencies.

Reagan thought that was unconservative. Last year George W Bush eagerly signed a similar bill with 6,000 such projects. In plain English, they are bribing the voters with the public purse.

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It is premature to predict a huge change in the Congress on November 7. Republican discipline could still hold on by a squeak. But a big Democratic victory could happen. And if it does, it will be Republican and conservative voters who deliver it.

The Times Online Article In Full

What else is there left to say? Get out there and vote. Make a difference. America needs your vote. Put these characters out on their ear. They are not Christians, and they don't care about you or your loved ones. They only used you to get your vote. It's time to take control of our destiny away from these madmen. However you feel, get out and vote!