Voter frustration a common theme
Across the 10 states, Republicans dismayed by negative campaigns
The 2012 Republican presidential contest sprawled across five time zones Tuesday, from the Sea Islands of Georgia to the Canadian border, from Nantucket to Nome.
Millions of voters finally had their say in the protracted presidential race. In interviews, they sounded a common theme: they’re frustrated. GOP unhappiness begins, of course, with U.S. President Barack Obama. Republicans want him out.
“He’s got to get out. Got. To. Go,” said Don Lofstrom, 63, in Nashville.
But many Republican voters also expressed dismay with the candidates’ campaign they’re witnessing — infighting, negativity and a lack of message discipline.
Some detect ideological wobbliness. Or they stare at the ballot wishing to see a name that just isn’t there. Barely more than four out of 10 voters in Ohio said they were strongly behind their candidate, according to exit polls.
This is an echo of what many GOP stalwarts have been saying all along: They worry about a lack of enthusiasm for their contenders after months of rancorous and chaotic campaigning. On Monday, former first lady Barbara Bush called the 2012 contest “the worst campaign I’ve ever seen in my life.” As Super Tuesdays go, this one was fairly modest: just 10 states, none of them on the scale of California or Texas. Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia spoke for the south, Ohio for the Midwest, Oklahoma for the Great Plains, and Massachu- setts and Vermont for New England. Throw in the frozen north — North Dakota, Idaho and Alaska — and this event was all over the map. For the first time, the presidential candidates had to appeal to a spread-out and culturally disparate electorate, a miniature version of what they would face in November if they win the nomination. If there was one thing Republicans seemed to agree on Tuesday — beyond the need to oust Obama — it was that candidates have spent too much time attacking one another. Tracey Cosby, 52, bemoaned the tone of contemporary politics. “I just feel like everybody is spending all their time trying to blame everybody instead of coming together,” she said. Cosby said she and her brother are gay, but they are at opposite ends of the political spectrum. She is a steady conservative. He is liberal. “We just need someone who can bring us back together,” she said. “We should not be divided by black, white or purple. We just need to come together. We’ve lost track of who we are as Americans.”