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The Gettysburg Address

"Four score, and seven years ago..." began Abraham Lincoln on November 19, 1863 at a town called Gettysburg. It was here in the rolling hills of southern Pennsylvania that the Union Army had stopped cold Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia. Ironically then that southern Pennsylvania is the next turning point in American history. Here is where George W. Bush covets victory more than any other state. Here is where he has visited 26 times, hoping that he can make a breakthrough and win 2004 in a landslide. But it's not just about the election. It's about war in a place called Iraq, and an ideas about the future. Even if Bush wins without Pennsylvania it's an ominous sign of a new "civil war". Of an ever diverging country where the needs of a slowly growing urban majority outstrip that of its rural minority. But the urban majority tends to be the impoverished, the underrepresented and those unable to lobby for the services they so desperately need.

Enter Arlen Specter. He's a 72 old man from Kansas no less...but yet he sits precariously on his Senate seat because the Club for Growth has decided to play a proxy war with no less than Bush himself. Just as the Spanish Civil War led into World War II, so does Tuesday's primary in Pennsylvania portend the future...of everything. Specter clings to his seat just as the Republicans cling to their one-seat majority in the Senate. His seniority ensures if elected he will become the Judiciary Committee chairman and have incredible power over any vacancies on the Supreme Court. He has Bush's support, and the support of the other Senator, Rick Santorum(R) as well as name recognition.

Should it surprise anyone that the handpicked antagonist is a little-known, little cared for Pennsylvania Congressman named Patrick Toomey? After all with Steven Moore's Club for Growth bankrolling Toomey's insurgency, it's possible that conservatives might get a positive opinion of just about any person...save Saddam Hussein or Hillary Clinton, running for the office. And Specter, who isn't sold on the redux of Reaganomics...stands there as a bulwark to Moore and his shadowy backers dream of a radically smaller federal government. The National Review has thrown its towel to Toomey as well.

In any case the outcome is simple. Run a much more conservative candidate in the general election, and Bush feels that Pennsylvania and his whole bid in 2004 is forfeit. The Democrats will regain the Senate and the White House. The Club for Growth feels that Northeastern Republicans like Lincoln Chafee(R.I.) and Olympia Snowe(Maine) could turn independent like Jim Jeffords of Vermont did, thereby ensuring that the only areas in "play" would be the Midwest and Southwest for years to come. Push through enough tax cuts, Moore reasons, and you will have government get out of plenty of places it need not be, and thereby allow the country's conservative mores to return.

But there's one ugly problem, and her name is Teresa Heinz-Kerry. Gore won Philadelphia by a 4 to 1 margin and only Pittsburgh was close. Assuming that Kerry makes a game of it and pushes hard with himself and the Democratic nominee...Joe Hoeffel, Bush's strong showing the rest of Pennsylvania won't count. Heinz is among the largest and most entrenched of Pittsburgh's companies, along with US Steel and US Airways. About the only card that might work is "gay marriage" but as the California courts are unlikely to determine if San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom has been behaving badly...that's debatable.

Gettysburg voted overwhelmingly for Bush in 2000. That does not tell us though, who they will select on Tuesday and which horse the GOP must ride into battle. Hoeffel's district is an area, (northwest of Philadelphia) that Rove covets and sees as key to winning the state. His home county went to Gore 60-40. With Hoeffel on the ticket as a man not from Philadelphia or Pittsburgh but a down-home Pennsylvanian...one wonders if both parties erred in not choosing Philadelphia for their conventions. Time will tell, but at least after Tuesday, the lines in one of the biggest battleground states will be drawn.
posted by Thomas at 12:41 AM 0 comments