by Chuck MacNab
Missouri is a "battleground state" and a "must win" if John McCain is to become President of the United States. Why then does it seem that only a token effort is under way in St. Charles County to visibly support that campaign effort? The County is a heavily populated, conservative oriented community in Eastern Missouri located just west of St Louis.
In driving around and through the County on the interstate and major roads one sees many more signs for Obama-Biden than for McCain-Palin. RiteOn is puzzled. Why is this the case in such a critical County in such a critical State when in past elections St Charles County has delivered an overwhelming number of Republican votes? Our research has identified several possible explanations.
First, recent deep-seated differences between Republican factions in the County may be contributing to the confusion, the "lukewarm" interest and the lack of volunteer enthusiasm. Over the past couple of years many formerly hard working local office holders and volunteers have been "unceremoniously" thrown out of the official Party organization and may have lost their motivation to support Party activities. Little effort appears to have been made by the current State and local leadership to mend fences. So, as a consequence, the Party's efforts in St Charles County in this election may be suffering.
Another reason may be the heavy-handed manner in which the McCain-Palin Headquarters in St. Charles County is managing its operation. Unlike four years ago, the St. Charles County Republican Central Committee and the McCain national campaign organization jointly share the HQ office, located in St. Peters. In conversation with a person who has a large political following and a business located in a highly populated and central area of the County, we found that local volunteers were unable to grant a request for her to hand out signs from her business in response to residents who had been requesting her to obtain signs for them so they would not have to drive some distance to obtain them.
Apparently, the "higher ups" in the McCain campaign decided they could only be given out at the Headquarters because of a requirement to obtain information for their database. Despite the businessperson’s willingness to collect the information requested, her request was denied. With neighborhood support in excess of 600 plus voters, it would seem to have made sense to make an exception in this case. After all, the purpose of having signs is to get them out there on display...or is it? Another result? Several excellent, high visibility locations on major highways around the County have large local and state Republican candidate signs located there, but no McCain-Palin signs.
In another instance, an officer of the Lincoln County Central Republican Committee drove to the St Charles County McCain HQ to pick up some signs, since there is no formal McCain-Palin HQ office in Lincoln County. When he arrived, he was given two signs and told by the national representative to return later and they would "see what they could do." It is our understanding that they had plenty of signs available at the time, but the individual in charge just didn't want to give them up.
Finally, in addition to the fact that many Republican friends tell us that it has been very difficult to obtain McCain-Palin signs, many of these signs are being removed by "unknown persons" from people's property. We know several homeowners who have had to replace their signs several times because they have "gone missing." When this happens in an area known for voting Republican. one can imagine what is happening in Democrat areas. For obvious reasons, many persons in those areas who may be McCain supporters are even afraid to put signs out! Some signs were reported missing in a matter of hours. Apparently putting a McCain sign on your property in inner city St Louis or Kansas City is the equivalent of wearing a McCain-Palin T-shirt on a street behind White Sox Stadium in Chicago, after dark!
Further, there have been several reports that Obama supporters have been depleting the supply of McCain-Palin signs as fast as they can at various locations by telling campaign workers they are Republicans in order to drain their supply of signs. Added to the voter fraud tactics attributed to ACORN, we would not be at all surprised to find that some of these activities were a part of ACORN'S "in your face," Saul Alinsky style strategy. In a County like St Charles County, where Republicans usually deliver a large majority, Obama liberal supporters such as ACORN know they need only cut down the size of that majority to win in the State. What we do know at this point is that ACORN workers are trained to employ various sorts of unethical and unfair tactics to influence the outcome of elections and we suspect that what we have described above is just "the tip of the iceberg."
What is very surprising is that the McCain Campaign apparently doesn't have a clue about what is going on and are unreachable when someone tries to inform them! Unless a change takes place from top to bottom, it looks to us like the previously described circumstances could generate a big defeat for the entire Republican ticket!