ShareThisBy CAROLYN LOCHHEAD
Monday, October 23, 2006
Deep in south-central Missouri, where wooded cattle farms mingle with Wal-Marts, Jesus billboards dot the highways, radio runs from Rush Limbaugh to Dr. Laura and carrying a concealed weapon is legal, a rebellion is brewing _ against Republicans.
"I've been basically a Republican, but I don't plan to vote for any Republicans this year because I'm so disillusioned with the Bush administration," said Dan Hatch, a biology teacher and landowner who lives with his wife, Cookie, near this tiny speck of a town on Highway 63. "It was the rush into the war above all else."
Even Hatch's mother-in-law, Ruth Moloney, a widowed cattle farmer and loyal Republican whose husband fought in World War II, wonders about President Bush.
"Well, I wish he hadn't got us into this war," she said. "I'm really sorry that he did that, because I don't know if it was necessary as far as terrorism goes. I think that man was awful hard on his people _ Saddam _ he was about like Hitler. But the way it's turning out is awful."
The best test of whether such sentiments will translate into Republicans losing their House or Senate majority in November is right here, in a toss-up Senate race that pits two smart, seasoned politicians _ incumbent Republican Sen. Jim Talent and Claire McCaskill, Democratic state auditor and a former prosecutor _ in a contest considered a barometer of whether Republicans can survive Iraq.
"This race is the purest test in the country of any tidal wave against Republicans in general, and President Bush in particular," said Dave Robertson, a political scientist at the University of Missouri in St. Louis.
"As Missouri goes, so goes the nation," agreed veteran political scientist and pollster Kenneth Warren of St. Louis University. "There's no question the rural base has been eroded" for Republicans. "The fact of the matter is in Missouri, the Iraq war is not popular."
Missouri is America's mood mirror, a perfect reflection of North and South, West and East, black and white, cow towns and college towns, union halls and country clubs. It votes as happily for Democrats as Republicans _ but nearly always for the winner.
Missouri has voted for every winning presidential candidate _ including Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan _ since 1900, with just one exception (it voted for Adlai Stevenson in 1956), and has done it by margins nearly matching the national vote. Bush's vote here in 2004 was 0.1 percentage point off his national total.
Both Senate candidates reside in the wealthy St. Louis suburbs, but are trying to erode each other's strongest areas _ McCaskill in the cities and Talent in the rural counties. Both are tacking hard to the middle.
A conservative in Washington, Talent presents himself as a moderate in Missouri. He seldom mentions that he's a Republican, but is quick to note his collaboration with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, on a bill to curb methamphetamines. He is running polished new commercials aimed at blacks that tout his efforts against sickle cell anemia.
Bush has made at least four private fund-raising trips to the state for Talent, but Talent avoids Bush in public. Talent trumpets the war on terror, but not the war in Iraq.
He lines up squarely with Bush for what he calls "terrorist surveillance," or domestic wiretapping, as well as Bush's approach to interrogation methods and military trials.
"We're fighting a transnational army of people who are out to get us, and we have to get intelligence in order to defeat them," Talent said last week at a forum with McCaskill. "We need to be concerned first and foremost about the freedom and security of our own people rather than engaging in technicalities with regard to terrorists."
As for Iraq, Talent said, "I'm supporting winning in Iraq." He said setting a timetable to withdraw, as McCaskill would, "is another name for quitting."
McCaskill, for her part, is campaigning in rural towns denouncing amnesty for illegal immigrants, supporting fences on the Mexican border and calling herself a Harry Truman Democrat standing with the troops but against Bush's bungling in Iraq. She is as big a hawk as Bush on Iran, supports tax cuts for the middle class and denounces GOP spending.
"Fiscal responsibility has been on vacation in Washington for the past five years," she said at the forum. "Earmarks are a new art form, and the idea that Republicans will balance the budget is a work of fiction."
McCaskill admits that she lost her race for governor two years ago against Matt Blunt (son of Republican House Majority Whip Roy Blunt) by ignoring rural Missouri, counting instead on the bright blue blotches of Democrats bisecting the state, anchored by Kansas City in the west and St. Louis in the east, along with liberal Columbia, where smoking pot gets a $25 fine.
"I made a mistake," she said of her 2004 race. "I think I've set a new record for anyone running for the United States Senate of admitting mistakes. But I think it's a healthy thing to admit mistakes. I made a mistake in '04 and didn't go out and listen to rural Missouri. I didn't show them who I was and my values."
