September 19, 2004

Tennessee Solid Bush Country

A Mason-Dixon poll says President Bush is up by 16 in Tennessee.

Bush would do a better job handling the war in Iraq, the issue of terrorism and homeland security, and issues related to the economy, poll respondents said. ... A majority of respondents in the new poll, 57%, said Bush has been doing an excellent or good job as commander in chief, pretty steady since January when he polled 56%.

Kerry's campaign organizer in Tennessee, Bob Tuke, blathers on in the article about how Kerry campaign rallies across the state are drawing big crowds, and then he makes this statement:

"As the campaign begins in earnest and we remind people of important issues like jobs, education and the economy, we will take hold of the momentum.''

Or maybe they think a candidate who can't come up with a better reason to elect him than that he served four months in Vietnam 35 years ago isn't fit to be president at a time of war.

Besides, Mr. Tuke, Kerry has a problem. Voters' number one concern is the war on terror, and they give Bush high marks on that issue and trust him with it. Those other issues you mentioned are secondary to the war, so if Kerry focuses on them he communicates to voters that he is not focused on the number one issue that concerns them - terrorism. But if he focuses on terrorism, he's playing to Bush's strong suit. Kerry, as I've written before, is in a box.

Readers, by the way, you may recognize Bob Tuke as the Kerry operative who may have had advance knowledge of the memos, later proven to be forgeries, that CBS used to smear President Bush.

Bush won Tennessee in 2000, defeating Tennessean Al Gore by four points. If the Democrats couldn't win Tennessee with a quasi-incumbent hometown boy, they sure aren't going to win it with a Massachussets tax-and-spend liberal whose record on national security is one of unrelenting efforts to gut the military and gut our national intelligence services. Not at a time of war.