The Toronto Star’s Tim Harper describes the surreal scene at a recent Bush campaign stop in Jacksonville, Florida:
In the hours before the president’s entry to the stadium through clouds of dry ice, a sun-splashed crowd more realistically put at 30,000 was serenaded by country music, entertained by pom-pom waving “Dubya cheerleaders” and heard testimonials to their commander-in-chief suffused in religious and biblical references.
Among the thousands of signs in the crowd, one read “God Wants Bush.”
The U.S. president won a testimonial from a Canadian-born former National Hockey League star, Ron Duguay, followed by Duguay’s wife, model Kim Alexis, who called the U.S. president “God’s gatekeeper.”
“One man can determine the nation, in God’s mind,” she said. “How can one man deliver so much? Well, only by the grace of God.”She also likened the U.S. military effort in Iraq to the armies of Israel which “as long as they pleased the Lord, they could not be defeated.”