From The Associated Press, 9/7/06:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060907/ap_on_re_us/southern_women
War turns southern women away from GOP
By SHANNON McCAFFREY, Associated Press Writer
MACON, Ga. -
President Bush's once-solid relationship with Southern women is on the
rocks.
"I think history will show him to be the worst president since Ulysses
S. Grant," said Barbara Knight, a self-described Republican since
birth and the mother of three.
"He's been an embarrassment."
In the heart of Dixie, comparisons to Grant, a symbol of the Union, is
the worst sort of insult, especially from a Macon woman who voted for
Bush in 2000 but turned away in 2004.
In recent years, Southern women have been some of Bush's biggest fans,
defying the traditional gender gap in which women have preferred
Democrats to Republicans.
Bush secured a second term due in large part to support from 54
percent of Southern female voters while women nationally favored
Democrat John Kerry, 51-48 percent.
"In 2004, you saw an utter collapse of the gender gap in the South,"
said Karen Kaufmann, a professor of government at the University of
Maryland who has studied women's voting patterns.
White Southern women liked Bush because "he spoke their religion and
he spoke their values."
Now, anger over the Iraq war and frustration with the country's
direction have taken a toll on the president's popularity and stirred
dissatisfaction with the Republican-held Congress.
Republicans on the ballot this November have reason to worry.
A recent Associated Press-Ipsos poll found that three out of five
Southern women surveyed said they planned to vote for a Democrat in
the midterm elections.
With control of the Senate and House in the balance, such a seismic
shift could have dire consequences for the GOP.
Democrats need to gain 15 seats in the House and six in the Senate to
seize control.
In a sign of how crucial races in the South will be to the GOP
national strategy, Bush was traveling to Georgia on Thursday to help
former Rep. Max Burns raise money in his bid to unseat Democratic Rep.
John Barrow.
The president also will give a speech in Atlanta.
Knight lives in another congressional district considered competitive.
Republicans hope to oust Democratic Rep. Jim Marshall, whose district
was redrawn by the GOP-controlled Georgia Legislature to make it more
conservative.
Voters like Knight could prove to be spoilers.
The 66-year-old real estate agent doesn't particularly like Marshall,
a hawkish Democrat and former Army Ranger, but she said she'll vote
for him because she likes his conservative Republican opponent, former
Rep. Mac Collins, even less.
"I'm going to go for the moderate, and these days that tends to be
Democrats," Knight said.
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.
___________________________________________________
Ain't that awful?
Harry
.
|
