"A visit to a legalised brothel in Nevada" re: Repug. "unravelling"

[donsu]

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/sasha_abramsky/2008/01/flirting_with_politics.html


Flirting with politics
US elections 2008: A visit to a legalised brothel in Nevada underlines how the Republican coalition is unravelling



"I like what Ron Paul says about healthcare, breaking it up so it's affordable for everyone. Now I'm an independent contractor, it can be quite expensive to find good health insurance," Brooke Taylor explains, as she waits in her workplace lounge a few miles east of the Nevada state capital of Carson City for a new client to arrive. "He's for bringing the troops home. Those are my peers. I want them home. These men and women are experiencing things nobody should have to. I like what he has to say about education."

Brooke - along with the owner of the company she works for and several of her colleagues - has begun campaigning for Texas congressman Ron Paul, the maverick libertarian Republican presidential candidate. They have even been offering two-for-one specials to clients who go onto their computer, access Paul's website and donate money.

And if Paul wasn't running? Well, then Taylor, who has a degree in music therapy and whose best friend is a political science graduate, would revert to her usual pattern - voting Democrat, hopefully, she says, for Obama.

Brooke's colleague, Max, disagrees. She's a Hillary Clinton supporter, hoping that if she made it to the White House the Bill Clinton magic would return. Why doesn't she like Bush? I ask, on a day the stock market has fallen by 300 points. "The economy. My income was drastically different seven or eight years ago. People are much more aware of what they're spending, and what they not going to spend now."

-snip-

The Bunny Ranch's owner, Dennis Hof, has - to the embarrassment of Ron Paul - been touting his support for the congressman for a few months now. Above the lounge fireplace is a sign (photographed above): "We pound for Paul". Just inside the entrance is another pithy banner: "Pimpin' for Paul".

-long snip-

Of course, Dennis Hof and his "girls" aren't representative of Nevada as a whole; but there is widespread tolerance for institutions such as Hof's, and there is widespread distaste for in-your-face morals politics of the sort that has come to define much of the Republican Party in recent years. South Carolina, by contrast, is solidly evangelical, the conservative edge of its politics laced with the legacy of segregation, the "morals" issues of abortion, pornography, gay marriage and so on always high up in voters' concerns.

Squaring this particular circle, winning Nevada as well as the South, might just prove one trick too hard for the Republican candidates to pull off.
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there is a picture

[CTyankee]

1. Well, it looks like some of these folks are going to be pounding sand

politically if they stick with that loser, Ron Paul.

[liberal N proud]

2. "We pound for Paul" & "Pimpin' for Paul"

:rofl: