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Not Dead Yet; GOP Braces For A Fight

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By TOM JACKSON

The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 6, 2008

SHADY HILLS - Nationwide, new Democratic Party voter registrations outpace newcomers to the Republican side by astronomical levels. Turnout for presidential primaries, when neither side had settled on its nominee, ran in the neighborhood of 2-to-1 in favor of Democrats. Contributions to Democratic candidates compared with Republicans are like monsoons to midday sprinkles.

Recent media polls tell a similar story. Four-fifths of Americans say the country is headed in the wrong direction. Nearly as many deplore the Republican president's job performance. Political historians have to flip back 44 years, when the nation recoiled from Barry Goldwater, or 76 years, when even Vanderbilts, Rockefellers and Mellons could imagine themselves huddled inside Hooverville shanties, to find moments when Americans so utterly deplored the Grand Old Party.

Adjectives applied to the political heirs of Lincoln, Eisenhower and Reagan would as likely be heard just out of earshot of terminal patients who, finally, had surrendered to the inevitable: dispirited, listless, demoralized, resigned. Also, divided.

Well, a funny thing happened to local Republicans on their way to the electoral wilderness. At the invitation of Bill Bunting, Pasco's Republican executive committee chairman, they gathered Saturday in robust numbers, brandishing ferocious appetites not only for barbecued chicken and all the fixings, but also for a decisive November showdown.

When the chow lines opened under the encouraged gaze of every declared GOP candidate whose district includes as much as a shaving of Pasco, the queue to the servers stretched the length of a football field and then some. Four hundred registered Republicans had been invited; actual attendance may have been several dozen more.

The only part of the day that even remotely adhered to the script as written by conventional wisdom was the location of their coming together: James F. Griffin III's Hallelujahland Ranch in the vicinity of the Suncoast Parkway and the north-central middle of nowhere.

Waging The Good War

Otherwise, the affair resonated with a not-so-fast ring. Perhaps their bravado was as false as the plague-stricken old fellow who didn't want to go on the corpse cart - "I'm not dead!" - from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." Or maybe they know something that has eluded those paid to analyze the pulse of American politics.

Either way, it was abundantly clear that Pasco Republicans, at least, are not taking news of their party's demise to heart. Nor will they - polls and even election results be darned - so long as there are such as Kristen Barnes in the mix.

Barnes, a 25-year-old account representative for a Winter Park-based medical equipment distributor, professed virgin and self-avowed GOP cheerleader, had come with her parents - Zephyrhills residents - as a sergeant first-class waging effusive war on the sloppy, shallow thinking within her social circle.

"We argue all the time," she says, "and I always win." Born toward the end of Ronald Reagan's first term in the White House, Barnes' political philosophy is high-revving Gipper conservatism, her needle buried in the red line, her tires smoking with every gear change.

Where her friends entertain fantasy world solutions uninhibited by consequences - troops home now! free health care for everybody! - Barnes enthuses about life, marriage, family, modesty, personal responsibility, private business, military, small government and minimal taxes. Turn-offs include promiscuous mothers, high school dropouts and the resolutely unemployed satisfied to live on government payments.

Moral Clarity's Bright Light

Minimally prompted, Barnes delivers this abbreviated stump speech in the grateful presence of Pasco Sheriff Bob White who, though not quite embattled, knows from criticism. But he also recognizes hopeful rays of moral clarity when they shine, too. When Barnes launches on about young parents of Orange County who strap their tots in baby seats, drive to nightclubs, park, drink and spew profanity, White raises an eyebrow.

That ever happen around here, sheriff?

"More than you would ever want to know."

"It's just a waste of life," Barnes says, and, in her world, supporting GOP candidates and causes is the surest way to limit its spread. "The last thing my granny said to me before she died was, 'Always vote Republican, honey. Always.'"

Saturday, surrounded by enthusiastic, unvanquished and well-fed folks who might utter similar deathbed pronouncements, Bunting fired up a cigar that some may have thought stank to high heavens. But the big-toothed grin that clenched it suggested that, to him and maybe even a certain celibate medical supplies saleswoman, it smelled - against daunting odds - like victory.

Tom Jackson can be reached at (813) 948-4219.

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