 An anticipatory buzz fills the room. Six crisp American flags, erect as soldiers, line the dais. More than an hour before the vice president's arrival, the GOP faithful stand at the ready. Never mind that Dick Cheney is favorably regarded by only about a third of Americans. To this crowd, in this place, he is a rock star.
| Cheney's not a pretty boy. He doesn't blow with the wind. When he speaks, he sounds like he's thought about what he's going to say before it comes out. What's not to like? |
And Gus Bilirakis, a state legislator bidding to succeed his father in Congress, is happy to bask in the vice president's glow, pocketing $200,000 in campaign contributions from Cheney's two-hour visit to town late last month. "He's a dynamic leader," Tampa attorney Monica Lothrop gushes after Cheney's standard, hang-tough-against-terror speech. "It was just a thrill to be able to see him in person."
| None of the Dem mantras count for squat if we lose the WoT. Health care, public services, social security will be doled out by the local holy man. |
Four days earlier, the scenario was the same in Iowa, where Cheney raised campaign cash for two Republican congressional candidates. Ditto three days later in Alabama and Arkansas, where Cheney was raising money for two gubernatorial candidates. Five and half years into the Bush presidency, Cheney's image may have taken a beating overall but "he's still Elvis to a lot of the conservatives," says Marshall Wittmann, a Democratic Leadership Council analyst. "When he comes in, money and enthusiasm flow."
| There's a certain segment of the populace that still respects grownups, that puts more emphasis on thinking than on feeling. That segment's the Cheney core... |
Cheney, always a stalwart campaigner for the party, is outpacing his schedule from the 2002 midterm elections. He has logged 80 fundraisers so far this election cycle, bringing in more than $24 million, with the heaviest campaign travel still to come. By comparison, he logged 106 fundraisers for all of 2001-2002. Democrats hope the strategy backfires, and they're working harder to use Cheney's visits against the Republicans. "There's nothing that riles the Democrats up more than Cheney," says Democratic consultant Jenny Backus. Cheney is one of the top two or three "bad guys" that Democrats use in direct mail appeals to rally base voters and raise money, she said. "Just like the Republicans used to use Ted Kennedy," she said, "the Democrats are now using Cheney."
| That's only fair. Both are emblematic of their parties. Advantage: Republicans, since Cheney's got a much lower corpse count... |
And come this fall, when both parties bid for swing voters in the middle of the political spectrum, look for some Democratic candidates to churn out campaign ads tying their GOP opponents to the vice president in hopes that dissatisfaction with the Bush administration will rub off. A recent Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll, for example, found that 55 percent of independents said they were less likely to vote for a candidate for whom President Bush had campaigned, compared with 7 percent who were more likely to vote for a candidate for whom Bush had campaigned. Cheney's favorability ratings are even lower than Bush's. Cheney may bring in a lot of cash, says Democratic consultant Dane Strother, but "the problem is that when he races through town, he leaves a stack of headlines. And come mid-October, you tie the Republican candidate to the Bush-Cheney efforts and, boom, there are the headlines and the pictures."
| Mid-October's not here yet, is it? |
Republican consultant Charlie Black rejects the idea that any GOP candidate will pay a price for "guilt by association" with Cheney. "Some people would say that outside the base he's not popular but that's true for the president himself, so that's just part of the deal," Black said. |