Interesting read by Clarence Page, a liberal syndicated columnist that appears on CNN and is on the editorial board at the Chicago Tribune. While some of you still doubt the legitimacy of a Bush victory in Ohio, this article dismisses a lot of myths about the "southern, religious fanatics" that actually didn't carry the day for Bush and focuses on the shortcomings of the Democratic message (narrative v. litany):

WASHINGTON -- As a political junkie who was born and raised in conservative southern Ohio, I was acutely interested in a post-election study by the liberal group America Coming Together of why President Bush beat Sen. John Kerry in the Buckeye State.

The answer, according to the study, sends a message that is conveniently flattering to grass-roots organizing groups like America Coming Together as Democrats prepare to choose a new party chairman and assess where they go from here.

Stated perhaps too simply, the message sounds a lot like this: Blame the candidate for his loss, don't blame the thousands of hard-working volunteers and door-to-door street workers organized by America Coming Together and other grass-roots groups.

The organization polled 1,400 rural and collar county voters in Ohio counties that Bush won by an average of 17 percentage points and came up with answers that defy much of the conventional post-election wisdom.

Was it an outpouring of churchgoers, driven by the Bush "moral values" agenda and the gay marriage referendum, who won it for Bush? No, exit polls show the share of Ohio's electorate represented by frequent churchgoers actually declined to 40 percent in 2004 from 45 percent in 2000, Steve Rosenthal, chief executive officer of America Coming Together, noted in Sunday's Washington Post. And nationwide Bush improved his vote among weekly churchgoers by just one point over 2000, while increasing his support among those who don't go to church by four points.

So was it the Bush campaign's superior mobilization of Republican strongholds that suppressed turnout in Democratic areas? Not really, Rosenthal noted. The turnout in Ohio's Democratic-leaning counties was up 8.7 percent, while the turnout in Republican-leaning counties was up slightly less, at 6.3 percent. And Kerry did better than Al Gore in Democratic strongholds like Cuyahoga County, home of Cleveland.

Rosenthal similarly discounted any wave of newly registered Republican voters in fast-growing rural and collar-county areas for Bush's victory. The poll also found new voters in those areas were just as likely to have been contacted by volunteers and workers from the Kerry side as the Bush side.

And even in these traditionally weak union areas, said Rosenthal, who was political director of the AFL-CIO from 1996 to 2002, voters indicated they were more likely to be contacted by a union worker for Kerry than by their church, the National Rifle Association or some other group that was pro-Bush.

No, the America Coming Together poll and others indicate it was not the local ground war to get out the vote but terrorism and the war in Iraq that lost Ohio and the national count for Kerry.

Despite the obviously self-serving nature of that conclusion, I think Rosenthal is on to something.

For example, the Bush side's most expensive and, in my view, its most emotionally powerful television ad was a $14.5 million spot by the Progress for America Voter Fund that featured a digital snapshot of Bush at a campaign stop in Lebanon, Ohio.

In the photo, which ran in the Cincinnati Enquirer, Bush spontaneously hugged 15-year-old Ashley Faulkner immediately after hearing that had she lost her mother in the World Trade Center. The look on his face was one of genuine grief, empathy and comfort. It ended with Ashley Faulkner's voice saying: "He's the most powerful man in the world, and all he wants to do is make sure I'm safe, that I'm OK."

Kerry's side had ads featuring Sept. 11, 2001, survivors too, but the power of the story in "The Hug," in which Bush became part of the drama without any prompting from any handlers or spin doctors, is indisputable.

The photo powerfully illustrates a narrative, a story, that gave Bush a powerful edge in the terrorism issue. "They produce a narrative, we produce a litany," James Carville, a Kerry consultant, said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "They say, `I'm going to protect you from the terrorists in Tehran and the homos in Hollywood.' We say, `We're for clean air, better schools, more health care.' And so there's a Republican narrative, a story, and there's a Democratic litany."

And, alas, there's a Republican victory when Kerry failed to tie his list of promises and proposals together into a unifying vision as persuasively as the Bush campaign did.

It all reminds me of how my generation of Ohioans grew up with simple unifying values like, "You don't change horses in midstream" and you don't change presidents during a war. Even during the late days of the Vietnam War, when I, along with many hometown friends, reported to the induction center in Cincinnati, despite our doubts about how that war was going. At the time, all that we knew clearly was that we were being called to fight to protect our families and country from global communism. So we went.

So it is with many of those who voted for Bush despite reservations about what in heaven's name the war in Iraq has to do with Sept. 11. Cutting through the fog of long, complicated histories and details, they voted for a guy they thought they could trust. Simple messages carry a lot of weight.

I can't dispute these conclusions.

It would be nice if the religious conservatives would acknowledge the fact that they did not win the election for Bush and STFU.

--PunkDavid

maybe if everyone and their mother weren't blaming them for giving bush the win, they would

I was just going to say the same thing. After all, isn't that where the whole "I'm moving to Canada" campaign started (where people said our country was being overrun by ideologues)?

I disagree. Beginning the day after the election, the news was saturated with all these stories about how "Moral Values" was the most common motivation behind people's votes, and immediately the leaders of every national conservative Christian organization was on TV and the radio talking about how they had come out in force and won the election for Bush, and how they now had a mandate to push their agenda.

Being representative of maybe 20% of the population (and I think that is being generous), I don't think they have a mandate for anything. If statistics can show that they in fact came out in smaller numbers than in 2000, and had little impact on the elections results, then I think they ought to sit back in their place, that place being representing their small constituency, not taking the lead on governmental policy.

--PunkDavid

I don't think Bush will let them take the lead on governmental policy. Laugh at me all you want, but Bush is more of a moderate than he is a strict religious conservative. He doesn't have to worry about appeasing certain factions in his party as much, despite their cries for mandates, because he won't be running for re-election in 2008.

I had read somewhere that a huge number of evangelical folks who had not previously voted and/or registered did so in an effort to have Bush win Ohio.

I don't know the accuracy or legitimacy of that claim, its just what I had read some number of weeks ago.

c-

I suggest reading the article above . . .