Posted on 11/02/2002 5:10:45 PM PST by MadIvan
Arkansas residents will today and tomorrow witness what the rest of the country never got a chance to see: a political contest between George Bush Jr and Bill Clinton.
On the stump at Ouachita Baptist University, deep in rural Arkansas, the Republican senator Tim Hutchinson is standing in front of a cardboard cut-out of the President of the United States.
"I have a personal relationship with George W. Bush," he tells an audience of 300 students. "He is a good friend of mine. And President Bush will be here on Monday to push us over the finish line in the closest and most important Senate race in America."
Sixty miles away in Little Rock, the capital of Arkansas, the local Democratic Party chairman, Ron Oliver, is also preparing for a distinguished visitor - one whose credentials are more local if not quite as current.
"Mr Clinton will arrive back here on Sunday," said Mr Oliver, whose office walls are lined with photographs of the former president in his youthful days as governor of the state. "We will have the help of the best political campaigner of the previous century, back on his own patch, to give us the edge and get the vote out."
Control of the Senate is in the balance in Tuesday's congressional elections, with each party currently holding 49 seats, one seat vacant and one held by an independent.
Arkansas, the small southern state best known for its catfish suppers and the escapades of Bill Clinton, has once again taken political centre-stage.
The Senate race between Mr Hutchinson and the Democrat hopeful, Mark Pryor, is too close to call. The prize, amid the most tense congressional elections in recent memory, is valuable enough to have attracted the biggest names that the Republican and Democratic party machines can offer.
Anticipating the loss of at least one seat to a Republican in a handful of tight Mid-West contests, Democrats believe that they require a "flip result" of their own in the south to maintain control. Arkansas, which became a Republican Senate seat for the first time since the Civil War at the last elections, is the top target.
President Bush will speak at the Republican stronghold of Fayetteville tomorrow afternoon, on the eve of the national poll. Ex-president Clinton will speak today to the black Democratic heartland of Jefferson County. No other state can match that line-up.
In Little Rock, Mr Clinton's power base when governor of Arkansas and presidential candidate, it is quite like old times. Doe's Steakhouse is again full of politicians, strategists and hangers-on.
Waitresses at the Plaza Grille restaurant wistfully remember the times when tips were good and the gossip was even better. "It was never a dull moment with Bill Clinton," said one.
Pardon me whilst I'm sick in the corner - Ivan
In a race defined by who the two candidates know rather than what they say, the Republicans countered the Clinton factor with an extraordinary array of star appearances last week. Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, toured the state yesterday.
Charlton Heston, known locally as "Moses" after his most famous film role, spoke on the same platform as the Republican candidate the day before. Oliver North also made the trip to Little Rock.
The two candidates have meanwhile made a spirited attempt to keep a grip on their campaigns. Mr Hutchinson accused his opponent of favouring tighter legislation on gun ownership, a certain vote-loser in Arkansas. Mr Pryor responded by appearing in a television spot wearing military fatigues and brandishing a rifle.
Democrat campaigners have gleefully accused Mr Hutchinson, who is closely associated with the religious Right, of lax moral standards following his divorce and subsequent remarriage to a member of his Senate staff. To ram the point home, Mr Pryor appears on the hustings with a Bible. The poll ratings remain stubbornly even.
Among young Republicans at Ouachita Baptist University, there was a distinct air of apprehension. "Clinton is an operator and a pretty unscrupulous one at that," said Stuart Jones, the chairman of the university Republican group.
As he spoke, a student removed the cardboard cut-out of Mr Bush. With a fraught Senate campaign reaching its final stages, Mr Hutchinson will be relieved to see the President in the flesh tomorrow.
Aren't those the most despicable ads you ever saw? Typical Rat sh*t! I for one am sick to death of the hypocrisy! You have to fight fire with fire and in our case we have to fight twice as hard because we are combatting people who will commit any sin known to man for the sake of winning, and yet there are people here on this board who are perfectly willing to overlook the undiscovered "sins" of a liberal democrat so that they can drive the next nail into a conservative with a proven voting record for the commision of his one "known" sin. Hypocrites! "Let he that is without sin cast the first stone."
This guy abandoned his wife AND HIS KIDS. The God of the Bible -- either the New Testament or the Old -- doesn't find such behavior trivial.
But I'm not holding Hutchinson up to a religious standard, I'm saying what he's done is SOCIALLY DESTRUCTIVE, because the epidemic of men abandoning their families is DESTRUCTIVE OF SOCIETY - it breeds fatherless kids and juvenile delinquency. A man in a high place who sets such an example for others is doing a particularly destructive act. When this society had standards - as recently as a couple of generations ago - - men who abandoned their families were essentially KILLING THEIR CAREERS, because it was considered not just shameful but very destructive to the people who were directly victimized and to the larger society. This is STILL the result of such behavior, only people in our anything-goes age are too blind or corrupt to see it. By the way, the abortion explosion is a byproduct of the same selfish irresponsibility in sexual and family matters that Hutchinson has exhibited, so I don't at all need him to defend pro-life. He'd help most by setting an example and withdrawing from public life in recognition that he's done a very bad thing to his family - and he should not be looked up to. By the way, read Morris's bio of Theodore Roosevelt and see what a true manly man had to say about the evils of adultery and family-abandonment. TR was no evangelical christian, merely an upright man who believe in keeping one's commitments above all.
Yeah, but you've also written in this thread that it would essentially be no big matter if you bailed on your family.
The fact that God forgives doesn't mean there aren't or shouldn't be consequences for anti-social behavior here on earth. God forgives guys in prison too. Do you want them let out for that reason? God forgives a repentant family-abandoner (although whether somebody has repented when he doesn't return to his family, is a question) but that doesn't mean we should sanction family-abandonment by acting as if nothing has happened when a role-model such as a senator abandons his family. It doesn't make me cold-hearted to say there should be consequence for Hutchinson. On the contrary, those consequences will be a deterrent so other men who are tempted might think more carefully before giving into temptation and abandonging THEIR families.
And YOU apparently don't have any human compassion or concern for the man's children or wife. ME, I want to spare families all the agony (And it IS agony, which can have consequences down generations) by restoring some social sanctions that might deter men from abandoning children and wives. Defeating Hutchinson doesn't mean I don't forgive him (or at least that I wouldn't forgive him if he was truly repentant and returned to his wife) it means his behavior hurts people (people you apparently don't care about) and should have consequences.
Do you know something the rest of us don't? Who said that he is the one who "abandoned" his family? WE DON'T KNOW ALL THE FACTS! His son does and he doesn't think his dad did anything wrong. I guess you know more about this than the son?
Clinton is a major embarassment to the majority of Arkansans. I have heard very few people say anything positive about him and those that have are very uninformed, mainly by choice. It will be interesting to see the kind of turnout that he gets tomorrow. Pine Bluff is a serious black Rat stronghold. We will post an after FReep report to keep y'all informed.
So you're saying that a thief who says he's sorry but refuses to give back the stolen TV is forgiven? I don't think GOD's that much of a sucker to believe that such a "sorry" is genuine.
A lot of kids will win if it means - as it might - that married men will draw a lesson from Hutchinson's experience and think twice before abandoning their families. Family-abandonment is a BIG PROBLEM in this country. We need to reinstate social sanctions against such wicked selfish behavior. Taking down a few politicians who have abandoned their families would be a great start to restoring some sound values and family-friendly ethics to our society. I want the GOP to recapture the Senate - withOUT Hutchinson.
Unfortunately my arthritis ridden body will not be able to deal with the wet/cold weather we have at present. Some of our Arkansas group will be there to greet him however.
Best regards!
Wirestripper
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