It will help decide which party controls the Senate for the remaining two years of George W. Bush's presidency.
President Bush, fighting to help Burns and thus avert the loss of GOP control of the Senate, campaigned here Thursday at the start of a 10-state tour that will carry him from Colorado to Florida before Election Day.
The president is spelling out the stakes of this contest, as he perceives them: Preserving the tax cuts he has won, waging a “winning” war in Iraq and upholding the conservative values that he vows to protect with his appointments to federal courts - with the Senate holding the power of confirmation for his nominees.
“When the people of Montana cast their vote on Tuesday, your vote will determine more than who represents you,” Bush told a few thousand supporters assembled inside a chilly arena in Billings on Thursday. “It will also determine what kind of federal judges sit on courts all across the United States.”
With more than 50 vacancies on federal benches, the president told his audience, it's essential that Republicans maintain control of the Senate. Citing his own two appointees to the Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, Bush recalled the resistance that Democrats posed to Roberts' nomination.
“If the people of Montana want good judges, judges who won't legislate from the bench, judges like John Roberts and Sam Alito,” he said, “you vote for Conrad Burns for the United States Senate.”
The president and advisers are campaigning with a confidence that they can stem a Democratic takeover of the Senate - as well as avert a 15-seat loss of House seats that would turn control of the House to the Democrats.
“I smell victory in the crisp Montana air,” Karl Rove, the president's chief political adviser, said before the rally in Billings.
Pollsters sense something else in their surveys: A potential loss of this, one of six Senate seats that Republicans are fighting to save on Tuesday.
The Billings Gazette, endorsing Burns' rival in an editorial this week, suggested that Tester, president of the state Senate, a farmer and music teacher, offers a “welcome change” in the U.S. Senate.
Beyond praising Burns, the newspaper cited the senator's involvement in a scandal that rocked Washington this year, with his acceptance of campaign contributions from the disgraced lobbyist, Jack Abramoff: “At a time when Washington, D.C., scandal is rocking the country, it is troubling that Montana's three-term U.S. senator responded to allegations of impropriety by saying he didn't know what money came into his campaign funds, didn't remember why he voted a certain way and didn't have control over the people who worked for him.”
Still, Burns' supporters have rallied to his defense, as Tammy Hall did at a rally here.
“I am ashamed of the attacks,” she told the crowd, reminding everyone that this is still a state “where we're not afraid to say, ‘One nation under God.' ” She added: “I can tell you, I feel good that I have a president who gets down on his knees every single day.”
It's a sense of bedrock values that Dallas Eidem cites when asked about how he perceives the contest between Tester and Burns. Eidem, who manages apartments in the town of Hardin, about 45 miles from here, wore new running shoes, blue jeans and a tan work shirt to the president's rally on this late-fall day.
“I'm sort of a big-picture guy,” Eidem said, and this is the picture he sees when he ponders a Democratic takeover of the Senate. “I start picturing gays getting married everywhere, more abortion rights, kids not needing parental consent for things. I think of the world falling apart - morally, just a downward spiral.
“I think of giving in to the terrorists,” Eidem added with a knowing glance from beneath the brim of his blue cap. “You know they're all voting Democratic. They know they won't fight as hard.”
This is the message that Bush is delivering with a campaign-closing appeal for support for a party that promises to wage war on terrorism, with its “central front” in Iraq.
“Imagine this,” Bush told his audience in Billings. “We're in the middle of a war on terror, and one of the most fundamental fights is in Iraq, and yet the Democrats have no plan for victory and they have no idea about how to win. ... Harsh criticism is not a plan for victory.
“If we leave before the job is done, it would embolden the extremists and it would dishonor the sacrifice of the men and women who have worn the uniform of the United States of America,” Bush said to cheers in the MetraPark Arena. “The consequences of retreat from Iraq would be felt for generations.”
This is the same message that Bush delivered in Nevada later in the day and will take to Iowa and Missouri on Friday, Colorado on Saturday, Kansas and Nebraska on Sunday, and Arkansas, Florida and Texas on Monday - before returning to his ranch in Crawford, Texas, before voting on Election Day.
Concentrating his campaign swing on states that have supported him before, the White House is counting on Republican turnout making the difference next Tuesday.
“This is about Republican turnout, and these are all close races where he can turn up the vote,” a senior administration official said aboard Air Force One en route from Montana to Nevada. In Montana and Missouri in particular, the president hopes to save two critical Senate seats for his party: “These are the two where we believe the president can have the biggest impact on turnout.”
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