It's late in the game and the Bush base is wavering....

[kentuck]

They are attempting to reinforce it at this late stage. That is not usually a good sign for a campaign. That is why they want to make "gay issues" a topic of national discussion. They still need to gather their evangelical and Southern base. Their internal polls must be telling them some scary stuff.

But, their actions do not indicate they are going after the "undecideds" or new voters as much as they are going afer the voters that voted for them in 2000. When you lose voters from a previous campaign, something is askew...

[TaleWgnDg]

1. I await WHAT the Dems intend to do about the Sinclair thing . . . n/t

. . . will they attempt a challenge in federal court?

[KittyWampus]

2. The Sinclair "Thing" Is Already Biting Bush In The Ass

#1- the only people who give a shit about the lies already believe them. This indicates how desperate Rove is.

#2- even mediawhores are disgusted enough to show THEIR disapproval. If the mediawhores are disgusted... you KNOW it was a bad move.

It is too late in the campaign for the sinclair nonsense to work FOR the GOP.

[snippy]

3. The Bush campaign told several journalists weeks ago that they had

decided to focus on their base rather than trying to appeal to undecided voters. Rove believes that the number of undecided voters is insignificant and wants to depress democratic turnout and have a higher turnout by the republican base than occurred in 2000. They have been relatively open about this strategy.

[Grillymom]

5. I agree about the internal polls

They must be terrified. Why else would they stoop to such lows as challenging voters and discussing the Chenys' disgust?

[snippy]

8. They are worried, but the GOP and the Bush campaign are not stooping

any lower than they have in the past. The republican party has had a well funded, well staffed, and well organized strategy for years to depress minority turnout and disenfranchise as many democratic voters as possible. The republican party, and Bush in particular, also have been willing to use false smears against democrats for years. That has been an explicit and emphatic principle taught to all republican candidates by GOPAC for the last twenty years.

The GOP is doing nothing in this election that it has not done in the past. And they have at least one additional smear against Kerry which will be released closer to the election.

[City Lights]

11. The problem with rove's plan is that the

people karl seeks to get to the polls - the Evangelical Christians - are most heavily-concentrated in red states. karl's plan will most likely make the red states maroon, but will have little affect on the outcome of the election. Just MHO.

[snippy]

16. I agree. n/t

[Dzimbowicz]

4. I live in SC and...

I am encountering more support for Kerry than I could have imagined! Many people who I would have considered Repubs are openly supporting Kerry.

On a second point, my school (I'm a teacher) is sponsoring a debate between our chapters of the Young Dems and the Young Repubs. The YRs want to discuss the issues of homosexual rights, abortion and such. The YDs want to discuss the war, the economy and health care. The other day a YR, who is also openly 'christian' (and wears it on his shirt everyday), was whining that since the student who is organizing the debate is a Democrat, the "important issues" of the YRs are being omitted. I, being one of the faculty coordinators of the debate, informed him that this particular student had no input as to the issues to be discussed. The reason is that we, the faculty coordinators, did not want to allow such topics was to prevent the opportunity for the debate to become a shouting match. The debate is also a fund raiser for the school newspaper and is open to the public. For this reason, we have no idea as to who will be in attendance in the audience. Hence, another reason to try and prevent a shouting match. And, I believe that there would be those (in most likelihood, Repubs.) who would try and disrupt this attempt by our students to address the issues.

[TaleWgnDg]

9. Bless you. Seriously. South Carolina! With all due respect . . .

how do you do it, Dzimbowicz? My life is easy here in Massachusetts where the Republicans are losing registered voters, are hiding in utter shame, hardly a word out of them . . . heh.

[Dzimbowicz]

12. To begin with

I currently reside in an area of SC which is just across the border from Charlotte, NC. With the growth of Charlotte many people from around the country and the world are being transferred here. Now, how do they end up in SC? The town where I teach used to be a small mill village, actually more of the old "company town", but as all the mill jobs have been sent overseas, the town has become a bedroom community for Charlotte. Therefore many people who are from traditionally Democratic regions are migrating here for economic reasons.
Now, on the other side of the coin. This mill village is also the place where Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker established their con operation (PTL Club) because of all the fundies here. These people are genuinely frightening. They equate being an American with: caucasian, fundamentalist Christianity, heterosexuality and so forth; you probably know the type... They are also the type of people who wear their religious beliefs on their clothes, cars, etc.
However, with all the migration to this area, the local population currently constitutes only about twenty percent of the total.

Most of those people whom I would consider to be voting for Bu$h are educators by profession and on Friday when I found out that several were openly stating they were voting for Kerry I was floored, but exhilarated.

Now for an important point: I have enough of an influence on my students and others, especially when it comes to the war in Iraq, because I am a veteran (USMC 1974-80). I tell them the unvarnished truth about what happens in combat. Although I was only in combat for one day (15 May 1975, during the Mayaguez Incident) I can speak from a first hand experience. The only other veterans amongst the faculty are the hard-core JROTC instructors and most of the students are turned away from these two. From the response I get from my students, I am getting through to many of them, although there are those who are "dittoheads" and try to confront me. I usually remain calm and use facts to counter their rhetoric; and, usually the dittoheads erode their own arguments.

I am a native South Carolinian and my family has been here for generations. It is my home and I love it, therefore I cannot run away. I must stand my ground and combat the negatives I encounter. Maybe it is the former Marine in me, or the person who became a teacher, but I just cannot give up and surrender.

[TaleWgnDg]

13. Well, I'll be damned! That's admirable of you, plus you are

introducing good values and information, opening their horizons to other than parochial provincialism.

Hats off to you!

. . . . . . .

[Dzimbowicz]

14. Thank you!

[Arugula Latte]

18. I just have to say re: Tammy Faye

She turned out to be not so bad! She's actually gay-friendly and more open-minded than I would have expected. Although I personally don't believe in a diety, she says things like: "God loves all his children." You know, she's kind of an inclusive fundie.

So maybe if Tammy Faye is not so bad, and South Carolina is not so bad, maybe things in general are not so bad after all. Gotta keep hope alive!

[kentuck]

6. It's usually bad news when you're trying to consolidate your base

this late in the game. Hoping to discourage "turnout" for your opponent sounds rather desperate to me...

[izzie]

7. They will be drawn and quartered if they do not vote for Bush.

He already has the team in place to do it I am sure.

[janx]

10. I was doing some GOTV work in my neighborhood yesterday

with a friend. We stopped by the house of a guy who is very right wing (guns, God, and gays). He said he won't vote this year because Bush* hasn't done anything about illegal immigration.

[IIgnoreNobody]

15. It was pretty clear at the second debate

that they had abandoned the middle.

[sofa king]

17. The GOP is relying heavily on "the base" for salvation.

I wonder how you say that in Arabic?