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The Reporters: US mid-terms

All entries by this reporter: Matt Davis

Double whammy


Both President Bush and his wife Laura turned up - separately - in St Louis, Missouri on Thursday - where an increasingly is raging between Republican Senator Jim Talent and his feisty Democratic challenger Claire McCaskill.

Mrs Bush was attending a private fundraiser for Mr Talent, a dyed-in-the-wool conservative who, records show, has voted with the president some 94% of the time.

It was the popular First Lady's third benefit gig for Mr Talent this year, a sign perhaps that the senator is feeling pressure from Ms McCaskill's campaign to woo some of the Republican-leaning social conservatives in rural parts of this Bible Belt state.

The president, meanwhile, was speaking at a renewable energy conference.

bushmissouri203.jpgIt wasn't a campaign speech, but the president name-checked Mr Talent, and his vision of corn and soy beans being used as the raw materials by future energy producers hit the spot with the Missouri farmers in the audience.

"We should put a couple windmills in Washington DC," quipped Mr Bush, to some laughter.

No word though from either of the Bushes on Mr Talent's recent comments in a TV debate with Ms McCaskill, which - with the president's ratings withering on the vine - were seen as an attempt by the senator to distance himself from the White House.

Asked - on NBC's Meet the Press - how he would rate the president, Mr Talent said: "History judges presidents. History is going to say there were some things he did that were right and some things he did that were wrong."

He added - much to Ms McCaskill's amusement: "Certainly he's going to end up better than Jimmy Carter, probably not as good as Ronald Reagan."

Links unlimited


If you are looking for mid-term elections websites, then is a veritable cornucopia. It provides links to more than 1,000 election sites, including the and a fair sprinkling of the .

About Matt Davis


I work on world news for the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ News website. Previously, I was the website's Washington correspondent, covering a range of stories from Beltway politics to Hurricane Katrina and the Michael Jackson trial.

I'm currently working in DC in the run-up to the US mid-term elections and, like US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, I'm an avid squash player.

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