XPost: alt.politics.bush, alt.politics.usa.republican, alt.politics.democrats.d
XPost: talk.politics.misc
From: steele.david@verizon.net.REMOVE
Without the "common man", those you call rednecks, no one can
win. They make up 70% of the voters.
On Sun, 15 Feb 2004 18:55:14 GMT, "Winston Smith, American
Patriot" wrote:
|Bush's problem is that NASCAR is not strictly a sport loved by ignorant
|white southerners (like himself) any longer (some people dispute whether GW
|is really a southerner, not whether he's ignorant).
|
|It seems quite a few of other ethnic groups love watching cars go around in
|a circle and hoping to see chassises do somersaults, body panels flying
|off, and the driver climbs out, unstraps his helmet, and raises his hand to
|say, "I'm OK y'all!"
|
|God, doncha love good ole fashion American technology some of whose
|advances came about because moonshiners wanted to outrun federal agents
|enforcing excise tax collection??
|
|------------------------------------------------------
|
|Race is on for `NASCAR dads'
|
|DAVID POOLE
|Staff Writer
|
|DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - Like many people, race car driver Kyle Petty doesn't
|have a precise definition of "NASCAR dad," one of the trendy new terms in
|the American political lexicon.
|
|Petty has no problem, however, assessing President Bush's reasons for
|coming to today's Daytona 500, the first race of the 2004 NASCAR Nextel Cup
|season.
|
|"It's an election year," Petty said. "We've run the Daytona 500 every year
|for 45 years. But the last time he came was an election year. If I were a
|politician and knew there'd be that many people in one place, goodness
|gracious I'd be there, too."
|
|Bush, a Republican whose brother Jeb is governor of Florida, came to
|Daytona in July 2000, when he was governor of Texas and a candidate for
|president. Now, as then, he will likely find a receptive audience.
|
|"Nothing explains George Bush's sweep of the South and his victory in the
|2000 election more than the super-majority he got among white male
|Southerners," said Ferrel Guillory of the project on Southern politics,
|media and public life at UNC Chapel Hill. "By going to a NASCAR race, it
|seems he's not so much looking for new voters as he is trying to energize
|the bedrock of his support."
|
|Exit polls, Guillory said, showed Bush beating Democratic nominee Al Gore
|70 percent to 27 percent among white men living in the South in 2000. In
|its strictest definition, the term "NASCAR dad," coined by Democratic Party
|pollster Celinda Lake, refers to that potentially pivotal bloc of voters.
|
|"He's defending his base," Guillory said of the president. "It's not
|incidental that Daytona happens to be in Florida, which was the most hotly
|contested state in the past election -- and after it. He has to hold on to
|Florida in 2004. He won it in overtime last time."
|
|NASCAR gets something out of Bush's visit, too, of course. "I think
|President Bush over the past two or three years has developed relationships
|with some of our drivers," said Jim Hunter, NASCAR vice president for
|corporate communications. "Tony Stewart went up there two years ago and the
|president said, `Oh, you're the bad boy!' Then last year, the first thing
|he said when he saw Tony was, `Have you been good this year?' "
|
|NASCAR officials and a group of nine drivers, including 2003 Cup series
|champion Matt Kenseth, visited the White House in early December just
|before the annual awards ceremony in New York City. During that visit,
|Hunter said, NASCAR President Mike Helton invited Bush to a race.
|
|"When he called and said, `I'd like to come to the Daytona 500,' we said,
|`Well, OK!' " Hunter said.
|
|Two other sitting presidents have visited Daytona. Both were Republicans
|and both were here to witness significant events in the career of Richard
|Petty, the sport's retired all-time winner and a seven-time champion.
|
|In 1984, Ronald Reagan was here for a July 4 race that Petty won for his
|200th career Cup victory. In 1992, George H.W. Bush, the current
|president's father, was here in July for the final race Petty drove at this
|track.
|
|Richard Petty may be the quintessential "NASCAR dad." His father, Lee, won
|three championships in the sport. His son, Kyle, continues to race and his
|grandson, Adam, was on his way to becoming a fourth-generation NASCAR
|driver when he was killed in a crash at New Hampshire International
|Speedway in 2000.
|
|"The deal with racing fans is that they're pretty independent people, and
|people who're independent usually are conservative," said Richard Petty,
|who lost when he ran for N.C. secretary of state as a Republican in 1996.
|"To me, if you put all of the people on a map -- the working people, the
|rich people, the poor people and all of that -- we hit right dead in the
|middle. NASCAR hits the mainstream of the American people. That's the
|reason the sponsors are here and the reason the fans are here."
|
|The sport's newest high-profile sponsor is Nextel, the telecommunications
|company for which today's race officially kicks off a 10-year, $750 million
|deal that makes it the title sponsor of NASCAR's top series.
|
|What was Winston Cup under a 33-year partnership with R.J. Reynolds Tobacco
|is now Nextel Cup, and Nextel Chief Operating Officer Tom Kelly has no
|qualms with Petty's definition.
|
|"What surprised us is what defines the middle these days," Kelly said. "The
|middle is not people making $20,000 a year any more. The middle is people
|who are fairly affluent."
|
|While there's no clear agreement on who is really a "NASCAR dad," it's
|generally accepted that the term should not be seen simply as a substitute
|for "Bubba" -- the beer-swilling, tobacco-spitting stereotype that long has
|been a shorthand for stock-car racing fan.
|
|"NASCAR isn't just a Southern rural sport any more," Guillory said. "It has
|gone uptown. NASCAR dads range anywhere from the traditional 1950s-style
|fan to the store manager who lives in the suburbs and to the buttoned-down
|fan who sits up in the expensive suites."
|
|Veteran driver Terry Labonte said he sees many different types of people
|when he goes out to meet fans.
|
|"But the one thing most of them have in common is that they're all doing
|something, they're working," he said. "They may be in different professions
|-- we have doctors and lawyers and we have truck drivers and people in the
|military and people who work in grocery stores and hardware stores. You
|name it, it's all kinds of every day people who're out there working."
|
|For Kelly and Nextel, it's not even all about dad. It's about mom and the
|kids, too.
|
|"NASCAR is unique among sports in how it appeals to the total family," he
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--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
|
