Clemency suggests

Email registration

Free weekly email update

Great products and special offers for Spectator readers

Click here for great value reader offers and events

Click here for the latest Spectator Wine Offers

Rodeo politics

James Forsyth

Monday, 3rd March 2008

This afternoon, in an attempt to get beyond the liberal bias of Austin—a city that will go overwhelmingly for Obama and where a Barack button is an essential fashion statement—we headed out to the Star of Texas Fair and Rodeo just outside of Austin where the vast majority of attendees were from rural Texas. At the show you were reminded that this is a Republican state with most people I spoke to saying they were planning to vote in the Republican primary and for John McCain. Few of them were particularly enthusiastic about him, but they consistently cited the need for the party to unite so that it could beat Obama or Clinton in November. Interestingly, while people were upfront about their dislike of Hilary, Obama drew far less of a visceral reaction. Indeed, I even met someone who had voted for Bush twice but who was planning to go for Obama this time and had donated money to his campaign.

Perhaps, most striking, though, was these folk’s lack of enthusiasm for President Bush. I didn’t speak to a single person who had not voted for Bush not one person offered a robust defence of him. Nearly every Republican we spoke to criticised him for being too close to the oil industry. Tony Blair is still popular here, though. Two guys selling agricultural machinery started off praising Blair as soon as they realised I was British saying that he was different from other politicians. They were genuinely puzzled as to why he had to step down. At the end of the conversation, one of them bellowed at me ‘to tell Tony hello. I like that guy!” Who would have thought in 1994 that this Islington lawyer would end up being a hero to rural Texans?

Talking to voters, one is constantly struck by how oddly the fact that one of the candidates is a woman and the other a black man plays out. One woman told me she was voting for Obama because “a woman isn’t ready to be president.” While one old union guy, precisely the kind of person who the stereotype says wouldn’t want to vote for a female candidate, said he was voting for Hillary because he was “old and prejudiced.”