United States President George Bush, sidelined from the fray in this election season, started a high energy tour of the Republican heartland at the weekend to rally party loyalists and try to beat back Democratic challenges as the mid-term campaign enters its final days.
With just over a week to go, the president begins a swing through Texas, Georgia, Nevada and Montana on Monday, hoping to shore up Republican morale at a time when the party is in serious danger of losing control of Congress.
Bush attended his first rally in Indiana on Saturday, rousing the faithful with a speech about tax cuts and gay marriage. Today he flies to Texas to campaign in the district dominated for a decade by Tom Delay, the former house majority leader forced to resign after a corruption scandal. Two years ago, Delay carried his seat with 63% of the vote. Today, the Republican candidate, Shelley Sekula-Gibbs, is struggling.
The rallies mark a departure for Bush in this election season, when he has largely confined his appearances to tightly controlled fundraisers, calculating that his low approval ratings could risk dragging down Republicans in tight races.
The president’s last push comes at a time when a number of Republican-held seats appear increasingly insecure — even in reliable states such as Texas. Meanwhile, the Democrats are trying to expand the playing field, buying their first television adverts in Kansas and other congressional districts previously thought to have been well out of their reach.
The Democrats need to capture six seats to regain control of the Senate, which has 100 members, and 15 seats to take control of the 435-member House of Representatives. Political analysts have suggested the Democrats could gain as many as 35 seats in the House.
The Republicans’ best hope now rests on mobilising their legendary political machine to get supporters to the polls in a number of extremely close races across the country. Party strategists have also tried to redirect attention away from the war in Iraq with a final barrage of negative advertising campaigns.
But the Democrats claim to have honed their plans for voter mobilisation. Over the past week, Bush has focused on persuading Americans that he remains the safest leader in an age of terror. The drive to convince voters that the president does have a winning strategy in the war has had some traction. A poll in this week’s Newsweek showed that his approval ratings had risen to 37%, slightly up from the all-time low, with 29% believing the US is making progress in its policies in Iraq.
Those very modest increases were nowhere near enough to reverse the gathering momentum towards a Democratic takeover of Congress, Newsweek said. Of those polled, 50% wanted to see the Democrats take over one or both houses and 35% wanted the Republicans to hang on to power.
But Bush has shown no signs of flagging. On Saturday, he acted again to try to shore up support for the unpopular war in Iraq by holding a 50-minute video conference with the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki. The encounter was intended to try to allay concerns of a rift between Washington and Baghdad over American frustration that the Maliki government was not doing enough to rein in Shia militias. The White House spokesperson, Tony Snow, told reporters: ”There are no strains in the relationship.” – Guardian Unlimited Â