Ron Reagan: Anxious in Orange County

[kskiska]

I went to the heart of Reagan country to see how George Bush is faring politically. I found it's still a GOP stronghold, but even Bush loyalists are worried about Iraq.

Ever since the 2000 election, pundits have talked about this politically divided nation in terms of "red states" -- the ones that went for George W. Bush -- and liberal "blue states," those that favored Al Gore. On most political maps, California is colored blue -- dark blue. But a county by county picture of the U.S. shows more complexity. Blue counties seem to have a remarkable affinity for water. You can, for instance, follow the Mississippi River as a tendril of blue between some of the reddest states in the union. All of the Great Lakes states except Ohio went for Gore. The coastlines, notably California's, also stand out. But Orange County, Calif., remains an anomaly, a red county along a predominantly blue shore.

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But the GOP still rules the "O.C.," as Fox named it in its sudsy hit series. I visited Orange County just before the recall election to take its temperature, to see how a slumping Bush administration was playing in one of its strongholds. Had anything over the intervening three years since the election -- the body count in Iraq; the failure to find WMD; Bush's inability to nab Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein or the anthrax mailer (remember that killer?); the burgeoning budget deficit thanks to tax cuts targeted at the rich; environmental chicanery -- managed to shake their faith in the man? I found the county still solidly Republican and pro-Bush. Yet at the margins, movement is discernible. Worries about the war in Iraq seem to be the one place where Bush is vulnerable, even among true believers.

Getting people to focus on George Bush, of course, in the midst of the California recall election felt like scalping World Series tickets at the Super Bowl. But Arnold Schwarzenegger's victory makes a telling point about O.C's political evolution. Schwarzenegger, who is after all married to Maria Shriver of the Kennedy clan, is hardly tailor-made for the far right. He's pro-choice. He made his name posing in micro-briefs in front of a lot of gay male fans. He emerges from that bastion of left-leaning sin and depravity, Hollywood. Yet he polled over 60 percent in O.C., stomping the bejesus out of right-winger Tom McClintock. That wouldn't have happened back in the Reagan era. So O.C., a perennial conservative redoubt, may ever so slowly be shifting -- not left exactly, but toward an as yet vaguely defined center.

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Democratic pols smell blood. Their candidates are finally becoming emboldened. It stands to reason that if Bush wants to win the next election fair and square, he can't afford to be hemorrhaging supporters. Tepid enthusiasm won't cut it. He needs not only the rabid, Clinton-hating "base" but the center-right and "swing" voters -- the kind who can breathe with their mouths shut -- to be fired up and ready to brave sleet, snow and liberal scorn to get to the polls. It's unlikely Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia will once again pull a rabbit out from under his robes. Bush needs to hold tight to strongholds like Orange County to get reelected.

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http://salon.com/news/feature/2003/10/15/orange_county/index.html