Bush Forces Look Worried in Davenport Appearance (10/25)By Connie Wilson
Connie Wilson files yet another classy report from the Bush rally in Davenport yesterday
Considering that one of the Republican bumper stickers bears the message “Flush the Johns,” I learned something surprising at the Bush rally at the Davenport, Iowa, River Center on Monday, October 25th. Republican women don’t flush. At least, not as much as they should. Three stalls on the left side of the rest room. Only one was flushed. [Please join me in a chorus of “Eeeuuuuwwww!”]
The crowd inside the River Center, which holds 4,000, was smaller than I had anticipated. At approximately 2/3 full, this would be 2,640 people. I later heard that only 3,000 tickets were distributed. The crowd was much smaller than that at the Edwards rally in Iowa City on Thursday, the 21st, and much smaller than that at the Waterloo airport for Kerry on Tuesday, October 19th.
I see numerous people I know on my way to the rally: my trust executive from the world’s fifth-largest bank; Andrea Zinga and husband (who, since she is a Republican candidate from Illinois, running against Lane Evans, was surprisingly absent from the stage full of people-props behind Bush); Mary Jane and Rocky Nelson of Hampton, who worked for and with me for years at the Sylvan Learning Center (and, before that, at United Township High School); Jane Robinson of Silvis, former Silvis School Board Member.
In other words, “the usual suspects,” wonderful people all. But growing smaller and smaller in numbers, it seems. And, (with the exception of the above-mentioned account executive and the always-youthful Andrea), older and older. Not a one of them under seventy.
Bush rallies are full of people who are primarily….well…. old. (Takes one to know one.) Bush rallies usually seem to have many present who are better-dressed than their Democratic counterparts. Bush rallyers are more predictable, in that certain “buzz words” are used to denigrate the opposition and set off a Pavlovian response from the assembled mini-masses…”flip-flop”, for example, during this campaign year.
Republican rallies have Country & Western music or really old recorded music…and not much of that. At one point, I thought I heard a Rolling Stones song, but then, listening again, I thought: “Naaaaah.” Republican rallies invoke God, over and over and over again. This makes me increasingly uneasy. (Whatever happened to “separation of church and state?”)
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