How to Win the heartland - WP

[nostalgicaboutmyfutr]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55503-2004Sep27.html

The remarkable thing is that the middle-of-the-road Salazar, being unencumbered by Washington's conventional wisdom, is willing to ask uncomfortable but entirely reasonable questions about whether the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, could have been prevented.

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Salazar wears black jeans and cowboy boots (but, being indoors, not his trademark cowboy hat) as he chats in a cluttered backroom of his campaign headquarters. He recalls that a commission chaired by his state's former Democratic senator, Gary Hart, and New Hampshire's former Republican senator Warren Rudman issued an eerily prescient report in early 2001 pointing to the likelihood of a catastrophic terrorist attack on our country.

<snip>

Without making wild charges -- he's not that kind of guy -- Salazar suggests that Americans should want to know more about "two huge intelligence failures." He's referring to our government's failure to anticipate the attacks of Sept. 11 and "the intelligence failure that created the premise for the war in Iraq."

<snip>

If Salazar wins, it will be because he cuts the usual Republican majorities in Colorado's ranching and farming counties. That would send a useful message to Republicans who take the rural vote for granted and to Democrats inclined to give up on the countryside. And Salazar's straight talk on the war against terrorism just might give John Kerry some useful cues.