Posted on 10/10/2004 5:49:15 PM PDT by churchillbuff
CREVE COEUR, Mo. - If John F. Kerry were to walk into the American Legion post in this St. Louis suburb, David Navy says he would greet him with a hug.
"I've admired him ever since I first heard his name," said Navy, like Kerry a Vietnam veteran who calls attacks on the Democratic presidential candidate's service record "despicable."
Navy first saw Kerry on television during the Watergate era.
"I thought: I hope this guy runs for president someday," he said.
But that doesn't mean Navy will vote for Kerry next month.
"I'm voting for George W. Bush," said Navy, 58, a teacher from St. Louis. "He is pro-life. And I will not vote for anybody, no matter how much I love 'em, if they don't vote pro-life."
Navy, like many Missouri Republicans, is a former Democrat - and a living example of why this once-quintessential swing state may swing hard for Bush.
Moreover, political scientists say the legions of voters like Navy - who are motivated more by values issues than concerns about the Iraq war and the economy - could make it tough for Kerry to win other heartland states like Iowa and Wisconsin.
"He's just not a guy who's salable in places like that," said Kenneth Warren, a political scientist at St. Louis University.
Bush and Kerry offer substantially different agendas on values.
Bush strongly opposes abortion and gay marriage, while Kerry favors abortion rights and supports civil unions, though not marriage, for gay couples.
Those differences are crucial because the U.S. Supreme Court will likely hear cases on partial-birth abortion and gay rights in the coming years. With eight of the nine justices over age 65, the next president probably will nominate some of their replacements.
With that in mind, plenty of people in Missouri - where a recent MSNBC/Knight Ridder poll found that 47 percent of voters are evangelical Christians - say they favor Bush because of his values.
Such voters are especially common in the fast-growing southwest corner of the state, home of U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and the teetotaling tourist town of Branson. Among voters at Central Assembly of God Church in Springfield, not one said he would consider voting for Kerry.
Kerry is a churchgoing Catholic, but given his pro-abortion views, many are turned off.
"It's like he has no moral backbone to guide him," said Susan Conaway, 55, a Republican activist from Springfield.
Big cities back Kerry
Of course, Kerry has plenty of supporters in the big Democratic cities of St. Louis and Kansas City. And they're not about to cede the moral and values issues to Bush, either.
"If it's really all about values, why would you send all these kids off to this war to die?" asked the Rev. Lisa Scottjoiner, pastor of North Park United Methodist Church in St. Louis.
She said that, in her city neighborhood, voters are much more focused on the loss of jobs and the city's troubled schools than on issues like abortion, which seems like much less of an everyday concern to her.
Kerry supporter Paulette Washington, 66, agreed.
"To send our children into this war, and to send all these jobs out of the country - it's just ridiculous," she said.
Ellen Just, a student at Webster University in St. Louis who hails from Blasdell, N.Y., is voting for Kerry for similar reasons.
"Anybody but Bush," said Just, who doesn't belong to any church. Asked if she knew any Bush supporters at her college, Just mentioned her roommate.
"It's her religion," Just said. "She's Baptist."
Faith plays an especially large electoral role for Catholics in the state, too, thanks to a recent pronouncement from Archbishop Raymond Burke.
Burke - who earlier said he would deny Kerry communion because of his views on abortion - called abortion and same-sex marriage "intrinsically evil." That means St. Louis Catholics will commit a grave sin if they vote for candidates who support those notions.
Catholics took sharply different views of Burke's pronouncement.
"I feel it is totally wrong for him to be saying that," said Barb Monroe, 71, of St. Peters, who attends Mass daily and is leaning toward Kerry.
"Abortion is not the only issue," said Monroe, who worries that her grandsons, who are in the military, might end up in Iraq.
Things are more complicated, though, for Mary Easton, who moved to St. Peters two years ago from West Seneca.
"I think Bush hasn't done a very good job, and it's time to give someone else a chance," said Easton, a Republican.
But Easton - a devout Catholic - acknowledged that the archbishop's pronouncement could swing her back toward Bush.
"I don't believe in killing any baby," she added.
Religion plays big role
Of course, abortion isn't the only issue driving social conservative voters to Bush.
Unlike Navy, several veterans said they resented Kerry's anti-war activism in the 1970s.
"Kerry stabbed us in the back," said Lynn M. Dorrell, 57, of Washington, Mo.
Meanwhile, gun owners here are up in arms over Kerry's longtime advocacy of gun control, said. David C. Jones of Ellisville, president of the Missouri Sport Shooting Association.
And same-sex marriage remains a key issue to many in this state, where, in August, 71 percent of voters passed a referendum banning the practice. Similar referendums are on the ballot in 11 states this fall, including the key swing states of Michigan, Ohio and Oregon.
Political observers think those measures could energize religious voters in those states, benefiting Bush.
"There's a big increase in the role religion plays in politics, and there's no question it benefits the Republican Party," said Warren, of St. Louis University.
It appeared to benefit Bush in 2000, when he beat Democrat Al Gore in Missouri by 3 points even though Gore won the nationwide popular vote.
That gap is an anomaly for Missouri. A demographic mirror image of the nation at large, Missouri has voted for the presidential election winner in every contest but one since 1900.
This election appears to be close here, too. The latest poll, conducted by Survey USA just after the first debate, shows Bush with a two-point lead.
Nevertheless, Kerry has pulled his ads here, leading some to wonder if he is giving up.
The two sides are still fighting, though, as witnessed by a scene in a Kansas City park one rainy October evening, where evangelicals staged a "Vote Your Values" rally.
About two dozen neatly dressed men and women of all ages gathered to hear the Rev. Jay McAlister, of Leavenworth, Kansas, preach against abortion.
Before long, a half-dozen young people in jeans and headbands approached, carrying a rainbow-colored sign that said: "We the People Just Say No to the Bush Agenda."
Seeing the interlopers, Bill Conway of Kansas City muttered: "I hope they don't try to do something."
They didn't. Instead, the young liberal activists gamely took the pro-life literature that Stella Sollars of Kansas City handed them and listened intently to McAlister's sermon.
Afterwards, the conservatives and the liberals discussed abortion - and not a harsh word was spoken. Before long, the two sides exchanged phone numbers and went home.
But if Charlotte Planer, 61, gets a call from one of those young liberals, she's not going to change her mind.
Planer credits her faith with lifting her off welfare and allowing her to raise four children, all of whom went to college. A staunch abortion opponent, Planer said she isn't about to listen to a word Kerry has to say.
And she said that to make sure, every time Kerry spoke during the first debate, Planer's husband hit the mute button.
Moreover, political scientists say the legions of voters like Navy - who are motivated more by values issues than concerns about the Iraq war and the economy - could make it tough for Kerry to win other heartland states like Iowa and Wisconsin. """
This is why the country club Republicans are proposing suicide for the GOP when they demand that it abandon the life issue and other social-issue conservatism. These stands have attracted millions of Democrats to the Republican Party.
This is smoke and mirrors. Kerry would not do anything to prevent unelected judges from imposing same sex marriage, so he is objectively pro-gay marriage (in the same way Orwell called pre-WWII pacifists "objectively pro-Nazi").
For real?
This guy's name is Davy Navy?
Ha, what a riot !
I've definately come to RNC for the social issues and REAL protection of civil rights. Some CC republicans remind me of nothing more than cheap democrats.
"...Rev. Lisa Scottjoiner, pastor of North Park United Methodist Church in St. Louis... said ... voters are much more focused on the loss of jobs and the city's troubled schools than on issues like abortion, which seems like much less of an everyday concern to her..."
- - -
Very Christian of you to say that, Reverend Lisa.
"Instead, the young liberal activists gamely took the pro-life literature that Stella Sollars of Kansas City handed them and listened intently to McAlister's sermon."
Just ask them which one of them wishes they had been aborted.
CREVE COEUR - hmmmmmm how do I say this? I just cannot do it, and I am from Missouri
You are correct.
This is why I hope, if it's not being done already or is in the works, that the gop absolutely pounds these swing states, and, especially conservative lying districts in such states, with ads about Kerry's pro-gay, pro-abort, tax-hike, Massachusetts liberal stance.
Creve Coeur -- you say it "Broken Heart", but really it means 'broken' the way a blowout of a tire is broken, more like 'ripped apart.'
I have come to think over the years that people who have no religion are like people who are deaf -- you can't explain music to them no matter how hard you try -- they have to hear it for themselves or they can't understand it at all.
Finally, a teacher who says 'abortion seems far away' is going to wonder why she has no job when all her would be students have been aborted. Not to mention that she'll wonder who is going to pay her Social Security and Medicare ...
I hope we hear a lot about social issues on Wednesday night. RINOs be damned, gay marriage and partial birth abortion are winning issues for Bush.
Articles like this is why we hate the mainstream media...
I would like to mute the button when Kerry is on too...not because I am closed-minded, as this article is trying to imply, but because the lying sack of dog manure lies so much it's bad for my blood pressure.
Also, when the Hollywood looneys read that 47% of us are evangelicals (I'm not, but I AM Christian), they go nuclear cuz they read that as "religious nut." Just look at the way they portray Christians on their propaganda, I mean, their TV shows...
Leaving aside the blatant judgment Pastor Lisa engages in, shall we compare body counts of the USA's abortion mills with how many soldiers have died liberating Iraq?
But she's not concerned that her grandson's wives or girlfriends could turn her great-grandchildren into medical waste? A grandson going to defend our country is not yet a fatality. His girlfriend going to a human abbetoir...
Well, the overwhelming odds are that someone won't be leaving the clinic alive.
partial birth abortion = ghoulish? ghastly? dispicable? horrendous? disgusting? all of the above? the-words-don't-exist-to-describe-it practice?
As in Creve Coeur Park. Where the young Indian maiden threw herself off the water fall there after her French lover broke her heart.
I know this place well, I grew up very close to it. One day, as kids, my brother and I were walking arcoss the top of the falls and he slipped and fell. He cracked his head open but lived. It's about a 30 foot drop.
Sounds like fun.
Now if we could just arrange to have the broadcasters block out Kerry's botoxed face...
Ping.
Sounds like a good place for Tuh-ree-sah Kerry to spend November 3rd.
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