Better Off Talentless
...Jim Talent is a well-liked incumbent, conservative senator with whiffs of moderation -- as well as a seasoned campaigner first elected to public office at 28. He is now 49.
Claire McCaskill, the state auditor and Democratic challenger, lost in a 2004 race for governor and, last month, requested privacy for herself and her kids after her ex-husband was murdered in Kansas City. She is going to have a tough time trying to win: Consider that Missouri has grown increasingly red since George W. Bush beat Gore by three points in 2000 after Democrats conceded the state to concentrate on Florida (ha!). In 2004, Kerry got stomped by seven points, 53 percent to 46 percent.
So what then is this rumble out of Missouri this week showing Talent and McCaskill in a statistical dead heat? The poll, which was done by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, (where I once drew a paycheck), puts McCaskill ahead of Talent by three points, 47 percent to 44 percent. That is not good news for the GOP -- even if there are ten months to Election Day.
While this will be a surprise to most people, I have a bit of an inside angle on this and do not find it shocking whatsoever. My sister and her husband live out in the Ozarks on a 90-acre homestead, deep in what everyone believes is Bible Belt, George W Bush-believing land.
Well, that is only half right. Bible Belt, yes. In nearby Cape Girardeau (Rush Limbaugh's own home town), there are well over 120 churches in a town of only 37,000.
But anyone thinking that this is a monolithic, conservative area that loves George W Bush would actually be sore wrong. Regardless of the official results of the 2004 election results in the area (which I personallly do not know at present), I found in talks with my brother-in-law that he does not know anyone who admits to having voted for Bush in 2004.
Does that strike you as peculiar? It did me, too. But he told me that everyone he talks to during his running around town and country in the nearby counties is livid about the man in the White House. Their attitudes are, boiled down, "He don't represent ME! I didn't vote for the asshole. He's driving the country into the ground." What came across was a solid impression that Bush's rural vote totals in Missouri in 2004 may have been as bogus as the vote count in Ohio.
Down Home MissouriThe people there simply DO NOT LIKE BUSH. Deep in the Bible Belt - fundamentalist central. Missouri is maybe the deepest of deeply fundamentalist states, with many, MANY independent Baptist churches and it is the home of the Missouri Synod, a major division of fundamentalist Christianity in the U.S. A 2,000 page book could be written on the ins and outs of fundamental sects in Missouri - and still only touch on the bare outer edges of it all.
BUT THESE PEOPLE DO NOT LIKE BUSH.
Why?
They think he is stupid.
They think he has given religion a bad name.
They think he has given America a black eye. Torture. Renditions. Iraq.
They don't agree with the war in Iraq. Pre-emptive war that their sons and daughters are fighting. Lies to Congress to get the approval to go ahead with the use of force. This is an area of hunters galore. They are not pansy Liberals. But neither are they gullible or ignorant about what America is about. They think that the WMD issue was, and is, important. They think they have been lied to.
I don't know what they think about the NSA snooping, as I have not talked recently enough with my brother-in-law. When I find out, I will post here.
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Taken all together, do not accept that this population will vote for Republicans in November or in 2008. Will the GOP still carry the state? IMHO, that depends on the shennanigans behind the scenes and behind the software and who has access to the vote tabulators before the totals are rung up.
The people there don't know who among them DID vote for Bush in 2004, and they may wonder the same thing in 2006 about this Senate seat. If there is an honest election, be prepared for a real shoot-down of the GOP in Missouri, come November.
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