TN-SEN GOP candidates out of touch on Iraq

The three top Republican candidates in the race to fill Bill Frist's Senate seat think Tennessee voters don't care about the Iraq war. From the AP via the Knoxville News Sentinel:

NASHVILLE - Negative public opinion about the war in Iraq won't be much of a factor in next month's Republican U.S. Senate primary, according to the three main candidates.

Former Chattanooga Mayor Bob Corker and former congressmen Ed Bryant and Van Hilleary say Republican primary voters in Tennessee generally support President Bush and the war in Iraq.

The candidates instead prefer to distinguish themselves on other issues, like abortion, immigration and federal spending.

Maybe they should read the polls.

But a Middle Tennessee State University poll released in March found Bush's approval rating in the state was 42 percent - down from 55 percent a year earlier - while one in four of those polled said the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were the No. 1 problem for the country.

Except for a few diehard yellowdogs, Tennessee's been strongly red for the last 10 or 20 years, but maybe attitudes like that will help turn things around.

Democratic candidate Harold Ford Jr. is more enlightened:

U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr., the likely Democratic candidate, said he finds it hard to believe that voters will not be thinking about the war when they cast their ballots.

"The war in Iraq has cost $400 billion, we've lost 2,500 soldiers," Ford said at a recent campaign event. "I don't know what world my Republican opponents are living in if they don't believe the war in Iraq is an important issue to people across this state."

Ford has some pretty crappy positions on some issues such as gay marriage, but how can he be worse than the three Frist-wannabes, whom Ford referred to recently as the three stooges?