Reply #2: Here in East Tennessee, his anti-war vote didn't go over well.

[SharonAnn]

However, he's popular enough that he can "ride it out".

He's more like a true conservative. Not interested in foreign intervention unless absolutely necessary, and Saddam Hussein's removal was not absolutely necessary. He's seeing things for what they are with the Iraq war and with all the other deficit exploding spending of the * administration.

However, the downside is that he favors a drastic change in the Federal tax system that would be something like a "value added tax" on all personal spending. This, of course, would heavily penalize low income people who have to spend everything they have in order to survive and would reward the wealthy who spend a much smaller percentage of their income to live and invest the rest. And, the wealthy will find ways to even avoid taxes on what they spend.

I meet with him every time he has "constituent" day in the area and he's pretty consistent in his conservative views.

Interestingly, when I first met with him on the problems of "Black Box Voting" and the lack of a Voter Verified Paper Ballot, he was extremely interested and is supportive of Rush Holt's bill in the House or a different one if it's an improvement. I don't think he's signed on to it yet, but I hope he will.

He did say that he had "paid for" his vote against the war but didn't go into details. I imagine Tom DeLay used his famous "hammer" technique on Duncan by witholding something that East Tennessee needs.