You have to love this opening paragraph of
this Newsweek article.
Nov. 3 issue -- Hilary Cleveland of New London, N.H., goes way back with the Bush family. Her late husband, James Colgate (Jimmy) Cleveland, was a Republican in Congress, where his paddle-ball partner in the House gym was George H.W. Bush. Hilary served on the Andover board with Barbara Bush and was finance chair of Bush's primary campaign in New Hampshire in 1980. She organized locally for George W. in 2000. But the other day, upset over the war in Iraq, she left the Republican Party, changing her registration to "undeclared" so she could vote for Dr. Howard Dean in the Democratic primary in January. "You don't go to war without valid reason," she said, "or international support." Bush's call for $87 billion in new spending on Iraq offended her Yankee sense of thrift: "I believe in fiscal integrity and balanced budgets, and spending so much doesn't seem sound."
And below that, comes the hint that Sen. McCain might soon decide to jump from this sinking ship.
Though there is no love lost between Bush and McCain--the residue of the brutal nomination race--the senator has been a dutiful soldier.
Until now. In a NEWSWEEK interview, McCain for the first time compared the situation in Iraq to Vietnam, where he survived six years of wartime imprisonment, and began openly distancing himself from Bush's war strategy.
The article includes some comments from Zogby, making a direct connection between war sentiments, the $87b, and Dean's surge in NH.
"The president has handed Democrats a huge issue called '87 billion'," said polltaker John Zogby, whose latest poll shows Dean surging in New Hampshire. "That much money crystallizes everyone's concerns about the war."
