Man, just read this! This is what we are up against! Alice in Wonderland (and even in Maryland!)
By David Nitkin | Sun reporter
September 4, 2007
SALISBURY - If there is a corner of the Mid-Atlantic that can still be called Bush Country, this is it. On Maryland's Eastern Shore, solid Republican territory where Old Glory hangs from front porches and melon farms are handed down through generations, voters express grudging support for a president who they say has done the best he could under difficult circumstances.
Residents say they expect a long fight in the Middle East and have yet to think seriously about the next president.
The Iraq war may not be going as expected, but "I don't think it's anybody's fault," said Prana Saveikis, a 70-year-old data processing retiree who voted for Bush twice.
"The Muslim mindset is quite different. We hadn't anticipated that," he said. "I don't think we can blame the president or our politicians. The rest of the world did not see that."
In less than two weeks, the White House will deliver its latest progress report on Iraq, and is steeling for a renewed fight with congressional Democrats who have called for an end to the war. Each side is seeking evidence that will provide an advantage, positioning itself for the coming election.
But the debate is just a faint echo across the flat farmland and encroaching subdivisions here, where a sense of resignation over the war and the administration's handling of it has settled in.
"I think we need to stay in Iraq. We didn't do Japan and Germany this quickly," said Steven Bacon, 56, a former Maryland state trooper who calls himself a "George Bush fan," but gives the president a failing grade for his handling of the war. "People's patience is thin. We are in a microwave society. Everything needs to be done in a minute."
The president took a clear majority of the vote in 2004 in the congressional district that includes Wicomico County and the rest of the Eastern Shore. It is generally friendly country for members of the Bush administration, some of whom own Chesapeake Bay waterfront homes nearby - notably Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
But even in this GOP stronghold, expectations are low for the final months of Bush's term. Residents see little progress in Iraq or the other issues, yet they don't foresee a successor doing any better.
"It's a bad situation. He's done what he's had to do so far," said David Boog, 64, waiting for customers at the one-chair Hebron Barber Shop, where fishing gear is sold alongside combs. "I can't see anybody coming up with alternate plans that make sense. To pull out now is not an option."
Bush "probably thinks he's doing the best he can do," said Linda Wessells, 52, a registered nurse who recently wrapped a yellow ribbon around a tree in her front yard to commemorate this year's Salisbury University commencement speaker, whose National Guard unit is heading for Iraq.
"We certainly don't want
Iraq to come over here," Wessells said. "You have to finish what you started."
That opinion isn't widely shared across the country right now. About six in 10 voters say they don't approve of the way Bush is handling his job, the most recent national polls show. An even greater proportion doesn't like the way things are heading in Iraq.
But on the Eastern Shore, Mike Harcum says he believes withdrawing from Iraq would be a serious mistake.
"If we don't see it through, it will be the waste of a tremendous amount of lives," said Harcum, a Hebron farmer, as he climbed into his mud-splattered pickup truck after eating with friends at the Hebron Family Restaurant.
Harcum, 44, is a Bush supporter who says he doesn't expect much progress between now and the end of the president's term. "The last year, he's not going to get anything done," he said. "Democrats are controlling too much."
He said he hasn't thought much about who might get his vote next year. "I'm looking more toward the actor," he said, a reference to Fred Thompson, the former Republican senator from Tennessee who is expected to announce his candidacy Thursday.
A short drive up Nanticoke Road, Harcum's father, Ralph Harcum, was selling melons, tomatoes and peaches at a fruit stand that is a fixture on U.S. 50, the highway that connects Easton, Cambridge, Salisbury and Ocean City along the spine of the Lower Shore.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation/bal-te.bushmd04sep04,0,3467747.story?coll=bal_tab01_layout:wtf: :wtf: 
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