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EDITOR’S NOTE: This article appears in the October 25, 2004, issue of National Review.After a campaign rally in Minnesota on September 16, President Bush spoke to a few of his supporters, including Republican governor Tim Pawlenty and congressman Jim Ramstad. Bush was amazed that he might win the state. If we carry Minnesota, he said, we’ll sweep. Advertisement Bush, like many political observers, is clinging to a dated perception. Bush may very well win Minnesota and Wisconsin. But they are no longer two of the most liberal states in the union. Carrying them doesn’t mean he will carry Rhode Island, or even Pennsylvania; it will, however, show how much these northern Plains states have changed.Both states acquired reputations for progressivism early in the last century, as Scandinavian and German immigrants brought a social-democratic politics to the region. Wisconsin was the land of Robert LaFollette, who took 17 percent for the Progressives in the presidential election of 1924. Minnesota, meanwhile, produced such liberal giants as Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy, Walter Mondale, and Orville Freeman.Wisconsin hasn’t voted for a Republican presidential candidate since Reagan’s landslide in 1984. One of Wisconsin’s Senate seats — the one now held by Herb Kohl — has been held by a Democrat continuously since Joe McCarthy died in 1957. Minnesota has gone even longer without voting for a Republican presidential candidate; longer, indeed, than any other state. It has not done it since 1972.Now both states are moving rightward. Realignment isn’t happening the way it did in the South, where states started voting for Republican presidential candidates and only later backed local Republican candidates. In Minnesota, especially,tomsoutletsaleonlinecheap.com, the Republican vote is increasing at every level simultaneously.YOU CAN READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE IN THE CURRENT ISSUE OF THE DIGITAL VERSION OF NATIONAL REVIEW. IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A SUBSCRIPTION TO NR DIGITAL OR NATIONAL REVIEW, YOU CAN SIGN UP FOR A SUBSCRIPTION TO NATIONAL REVIEW here OR NATIONAL REVIEW DIGITAL here (a subscription to NR includes Digital access).[标签:标题]
We all breathed a little easier after the second debate, for the president seemed to be his feisty self–quite engaged and responsive. He was actually fairly good on substance during the first debate, but his main problem, which persists, is in marshalling reasons and explaining his case. Of all things, he invoked the Dred Scott decision the other night–and then had trouble explaining its relevance. He had the item, but seemed to lose the larger argument in which it found its place. An even clearer illustration came on partial-birth abortion, where he could have put Kerry in the most difficult position if he had only come back at him in a relevant way. The situation is likely to return in the third debate, and so it’s worth recalling. Advertisement Kerry said that this matter of partial-birth abortion was not so simple, for he wanted provisions made to insure the health of the pregnant woman. That is where the president could have made him look uninformed, deceitful–and callous. The president could have come back at him to point out:1. The bill on partial-birth abortion did indeed make explicit provision for the health of the mother: The bill said that the law would not apply to any “abortion that is necessary to save the life of a mother whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself.”2. That provision went even further than the law was obliged to go,Toms Shoes Sale, for as the American Medical Association testified during the hearings, a partial-birth abortion bore no relevance to any measure needed to advance the health of any woman.3. The president could then have turned the tables on Kerry, with a question that is still worth posing: This gruesome surgery is rejected even by people who call themselves “pro-choice,Toms Shoes Outlet.” The baby is mostly out of Related articles:

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