War weary

I just love seeing an article titled “War turns southern women away from GOP”. In 2004, Bush received 54% of the Southern female vote. A recent AP/Ipsos poll shows a 3 out of 5 Southern women plan to vote for a Democrat in the mid-term elections. If that holds, expect the GOP to take as serious beating in Dixie. The tried and true Rovian strategy of flogging social issues to distract from real problems is wearing thin as evidenced by this:

Sandy Rubin, a high school teacher in Macon, voted for Bush and said she's also likely to vote for Marshall. Rubin said the GOP's focus on issues that appeal to social conservatives, such as gay marriage and abortion, have turned her off.

"I care about job security and education. The things I hear the Republicans emphasizing in their campaigns are not things that affect me or my family," said the 39-year-old mother of two.

The movement of some Southern women away from the Republican Party tracks with national poll results showing that women have become more disillusioned with the war and were more likely than men to list the conflict as the important issue facing the country.

Nationally, the AP-Ipsos poll found that only 28 percent of women approve of Bush's handling of the war. Bush did better in the South, but only slightly — just 32 percent of women in the region said they approve of his handling of the war.

"I never did understand why we went into Iraq and didn't instead clean up the mess in Afghanistan first," Knight said.

Teresa Cranford, 39, also of Macon, said her support for Bush was lukewarm in 2004, but she ultimately voted for him so he could finish the job in Iraq. As the death toll has risen, so has her discomfort.

"I'm a mother and that makes me think differently about it," Cranford said.
Lynn Hamilton, 44, said she still supports Bush even though her backing for the ongoing war has waned.

"As a mother you worry, 'Am I going to lose my baby boy?'" said the Gray, Ga., resident. "A mother's view about war is often going to be a lot different than dad's is."

Neither Cranford nor Hamilton has decided how they plan to vote in the midterm elections, although neither ruled out voting for a Democrat.

"I'm not a straight party-line Republican anymore," Cranford said

As Thomas Franks showed in “What’s the Matter with Kansas”, Republican candidates have succeeded, for almost a generation, in convincing middle-class voters to vote against their economic interests by pushing a conservative social agenda. If these sentiments are as wide spread as the recent polling indicates, the R’s are going to need a Plan B. When our kids are getting shot at and you haven't had a raise in five years, bitching about flag-burning and gay marriage seems trivial.