NYT: In Unpredictable District, Some Say Bush Is Politicizing Terrorism
By CARL HULSE
Published: September 12, 2006
....Mr. Bush has plenty of supporters in this Denver suburb and the surrounding cities, an evenly divided swing district that is a bellwether in the battle for control of the House. But interviews over the last three days here found Republicans, Democrats and independents all expressing degrees of skepticism about Mr. Bush’s motives in delivering a set of high-profile speeches on terrorism and the war in Iraq two months before Election Day.
While it is too early to know whether the White House will succeed in winning over enough voters to make a difference in what is shaping up as a tight race, the interviews suggested that Mr. Bush’s newest efforts to cast his party as better suited than Democrats to defend the country had yet to overcome concern and anger among many voters about Iraq and a more generalized sense of discontent with the administration....
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Many residents said they were aware only in general terms of Mr. Bush’s recent speeches and his decision to bring high-level terrorism suspects to trial before military tribunals. They acknowledged that the terrorist threat often seemed distant, far removed from their busy lives in the shelter of the Rocky Mountains....The random interviews with dozens of residents across the Seventh Congressional District were not scientific. But they do suggest that Mr. Bush’s public standing could be problematic for the Republican candidate in the race for the open House seat, Rick O’Donnell, and that the Republican push on terrorism will not necessarily pack the same political punch it did in 2002 and 2004.
If so, that would be bad news for Congressional Republican leaders. They are counting on Mr. Bush’s concerted efforts to both raise his own public approval and to simultaneously help give Republican House and Senate candidates an edge on the security issues that have dominated the last two national elections. But polls indicate that the climate is different this year, with fewer Americans confident that the fight against terrorism is going well....
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/12/us/politics/12colorado.html