aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Monday, October 30, 2006

The Faithful in Georgia

I’m telling you, I haven’t been to Texas lately but when it comes to Bush lovin’, there’s no place like Georgia.

This is George Bush country.

Still and to the bitter end. He came on through today:

President Bush zigzagged from Georgia to his home state of Texas today, stumping for Republicans in Bush-friendly districts while looking ever more like the candidate himself. [...]

The intent is to fire up the party faithful and push them to the polls to vote, but at times it seemed as if Mr. Bush was the one getting fired up. The president seemed to relish playing the game of political expectations, as he tweaked Democrats for measuring for new curtains in Washington too soon.

“You might remember that around this time in 2004, some of them were picking out their new offices in the West Wing,” Mr. Bush said in Georgia. He paused to absorb the laughter and applause, then added dryly, “The movers never got the call.”

The believers here believe it and believe me I know that this, too, is absolutely true:

One of his biggest applause lines in Georgia was a reiteration of his position that “marriage is a union between a man and a woman.’’ The line brought the crowd to its feet.

We got us 2 Blue Dog Democrats here who he came to take down; and the Democrats apparently don’t much care. We’re not “key.” So the Republicans get the president coming through and I’ll keep complaining that the Democrats should stop writing off the South!***

They should be fighting hard to keep both Barrow and Marshall; most especially Barrow who was gerrymandered out of his own home district and is now attacked as an outsider in ads.

The attack ads are coming fast and furious (my phone doesn’t stop ringing) and it is all the state Republican party demonizing gays and immigrants. The campaign theme here is “one of us” and the point is that gays and immigrants are not. George Bush is:

“He’s still got legs,” [political science professor Bruce] Buchanan said.

Mr. Bush certainly showed his legs in Statesboro, Ga., where an estimated 6,000 people packed into the gymnasium at Georgia Southern University to see him campaign for Max Burns, a former congressman who two years ago lost his seat to Representative John Barrow, a Democrat. Hundreds more were lined up outside, apparently holding tickets but unable to get in.

In the crowd was Darin Van Tassell, a political scientist who said that if Mr. Bush could motivate Republicans anywhere in Mr. Barrow’s district, it would be at Georgia Southern, where Mr. Burns was a professor of business administration before going into politics.

“Barrow has a chance to be the only incumbent Democrat who might lose,” Mr. Van Tassell, who counts himself a Democrat, said. “I think this particular race has a chance to run completely counter to the rest of the country, which is probably why the president is here.”

I most certainly agree. Here’s the text of the Statesboro “victory rally” remarks.

*** I wholeheartedly support Howard Dean’s 50 state strategy and hold him entirely innocent in the abandonment of the South by Democrats. He’s come. Again and again.