It was the war, not-so-stupid

Jeff Pasley

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Thursday November 04, 2004 · 12:56 AM PST

2004/11/04 · 00:56

I am going to expand on this at some later date, but before going to bed, I wanted to throw out a counter-thought to all the talk about "moral values" and religion and culture war turning this election. That probably helped GOP turnout, but here in the middle of Missouri, it's the war that seems the bigger factor buoying Bush. Here's my impression from driving around the state a lot these past few weeks. Much more common than Bush stickers are these little ribbon stickers, yellow or RWB, with messages like Support Our Troops, Pray for Our Troops, etc. There seems to be a lot of concern about the war, and far from universal approval of Bush as a manager of it, but the instinct here is to conflate political support of administration policy with support for the troops and to resent criticism of Bush and his policy even when it seems rather accurate.

This instinct has a long history, especially here in "middle America." The Kerry campaign made a lot of mistakes, but I am not sure that there was ever much hope when so many voters seem to be incapable of voting against the incumbent president when troops are in the field.

More later, but you can get some insight from the WaPo piece on Ike Skelton copied in another recent diary: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/4/22759/4480 .

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It was the war, not-so-stupid

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