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Some Republicans Defect to Kerry's Camp By Michael Conlon CHICAGO (Reuters) - Ohio resident Bob Stewart says of President Bush:
"He's been a world-class polarizer. I don't know if I can stomach
four more years with him as president. He misled us into the war in Iraq
and has mismanaged everything since." A raging Democrat? No, Stewart is a Republican, one of an unknown number
of such voters who plan to back John Kerry, out of despair over the war
in Iraq and disappointment over budget deficits and social policies. It remains to be seen whether they can tip the scales in hotly contested
middle American states like Ohio as the Democratic nominee courts them
and battles Bush in the final three-month dash to November's election.
In past elections defections from both parties have sometimes canceled
each other out. Kerry and running mate John Edwards kicked off that fight on Friday,
leaving Boston and the concluded party convention for a two-week campaign
swing across 21 states. Stewart, 44, an insurance agent from Anderson Township near Cincinnati,
voted for Bush in 2000 and is a registered Republican. "I just have a gut feeling that Kerry can be trusted to make the
right courageous decisions and will make a good president. He showed that
with his heroism in Vietnam," he says. Bush is "supposed to be a conservative and yet he's run up the biggest
federal deficit in history. One thing that really turned me (away from
Bush) as a lifelong Catholic ... was to see Bush go to the Vatican and
try to get the pope to come down hard on Kerry for his stand on abortion.
That is absolutely appalling." In Michigan, Dan Martin has run for local office as a Republican. He
says his biggest disappointment is that Bush's reputation as a "compassionate,
conservative" governor of Texas hasn't proven true in the White House.
"The foreign policy is a mess. The offensive in Iraq is reckless
and built on bad decision making. On the domestic front I understand that
terrorism has struck and he's occupied but any real progress on a domestic
agenda has ground to a halt," added Martin, 32, a customer service
manager at a health maintenance organization who lives in Rochester Hills.
In Tennessee, Brian Boland, a young music company manager shopping at
a market near Nashville, said: "I've always voted Republican and
my folks will just kill me if they find out I'm switching to Kerry this
year ... but I am just frustrated with the way Bush has mishandled everything.
All the untruths." At the same market Ron King, a black Vietnam Veteran, said: "I always
voted Republican before but I'm against Bush ever since I found out that
he doesn't love this country. His so-called military record is a sham.
And the worst part is that he lies so much. He lied about weapons of mass
destruction." Lloyd Huff, 64, retired director of the Dayton Research Institute in
Ohio, says he has "voted for a Republican in every presidential election
I can remember" but it will be Kerry this time because "the
Bush administration has been the most deceitful, duplicitous, secretive
administration this country has ever had." "Going to war in Iraq was a horrible, horrible mistake," he
said. He accused Bush of "an arrogant, swaggering cowboy mentality
... he has done more than anyone to inflame the Muslim world by his words
and actions," Kenneth Warren of St. Louis University, who has studied and taught about
voter behavior for three decades, said turning a trickle into a trend
will be a tough job for Kerry because historically Republicans tend to
be faithful. Democrats are more diverse and divided, a "party of
factions," and more easily hived off, as former President Ronald
Reagan did with the "Reagan Democrats," he said. Clay Richards, assistant director of the Polling Institute at Quinnipiac
University in Connecticut, says Kerry is getting about 11 or 12 percent
of the Republican vote in Pennsylvania and New Jersey while Bush is drawing
9 or 10 percent of his support from Democrats, not a statistically significant
crossover.
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