ST. PETERSBURG — Five weeks ago, the St. Petersburg Times convened a group of Tampa Bay voters who were undecided about the presidential election. Their strong distrust of Barack Obama suggested it was a group ripe for John McCain to win over.
Not anymore. The group has swung dramatically, if unenthusiastically, toward Democrat Obama. Most of them this week cited the same reason: Sarah Palin.
"The one thing that frightens me more than anything else are the ideologues. We’ve seen too many," said 80-year-old Air Force veteran Donn Spegal, a lifelong Republican from St. Petersburg, who sees McCain’s new running mate as the kind of "wedge issue" social conservative that has made him disenchanted with his party.
"I’m truly offended by Palin,” said 37-year-old Republican Philinia Lehr of Largo, a full-time mother with a nursing degree who voted for George Bush in 2004. Like Palin, she has five children and she doesn’t buy that the Alaska governor can adequately balance her family and the vice presidency.
"You’re somebody’s mom and what are you going to do, say, ‘Excuse me, country, hold on?’ … She’s preaching that she’s this mom of the year and taking that poor little baby all over everywhere. And, you know, what she’s doing to her 17-year-old daughter is just appalling.” Lehr said she’s bothered by the way Palin’s pregnant daughter has been brought into the national spotlight.
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1 user commented in " Palin pushing Fla undecideds toward Obama? "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackOh please, the St. Petersburg Times is as far left as they come. Probably the most liberal paper south of D.C…of course they will print anything that is worshipping Obama.
Yeah, “undecided” voters, lol. For their “focus groups” they handpicked people that they knew ahead of time would tell them what they wanted to hear (Perhaps we should look into the size of the “group” — 11 people?). This doesn’t even pass the laugh test. If this “focus group” were typical McCain Obama polls would be 30% McCain to 60% Obama.
Believe anything published in this newspaper at your own risk. It has had to downsize substantially over the last couple of years — and for good reason.
Even if this were technically true, rather than a transparent ploy to rattle the GOP and deprive them of one of their most effective assets, it would still be wrong, because we’ve heard scores of cases where just the opposite effect occurrred, making Palin a net gain. My own experience with other people is that, if anything, Sarah Palin has pushed far more people the other way…including former Hillary supporters.
The press knows this and they are out desperately looking for any smidge of data to make it look the other way.
“The one thing that frightens me more than anything else are the ideologues. We’ve seen too many,” said 80-year-old Air Force veteran Donn Spegal, a lifelong Republican from St. Petersburg,”
Lifelong Republican? Then why was his only documented campaign contribution 11 years ago to a Democrat?
http://www.followthemoney.org/database/StateGlance/contributor.phtml?d=516961770
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