WHO THE HELL DOES HUNTER THINK SUPPORTS HIM? IT'S NOT ONLY ABOUT LOBBYISTS AND DEFENSE CONTRACTORS ONCE YOU LEAVE THE BELTWAY

Hillary has tried to reassure the Democratic base that if Bush doesn't end the war by the time she takes office in 2009, she will end it. In the much less likely absurd scenario that far right extremist congressman Duncan Hunter wins the presidency, he has promised the Republican base that if Bush hasn't finished-- started?-- building a war across the U.S.-Mexico border, he would ensure it will be "built start to finish in six months." So you want to guess the kind of supporters he's attracting?

Although Hunter is best known as a sleazy operator who has played fast and loose with ethics regulations and lobbying laws, a close associate of Randy "Duke" Cunningham's who was getting the exact same questionable money from the exact same bribers as Cunningham, he is fast becoming popular among the extreme xenophobes and racists on the fringe of the GOP, especially in the more backward areas of the country.

Hunter has taken in approximately $6.5 million dollars in legal bribes, much of it from Republican-connected defense contractors whose agendas he pushed over and above the welfare of the U.S. military. His less than legal briber taking is under federal investigation in connection to the Cunningham case. His voting record is far to the right of the American maintream and shows a well defined and unswerving proclivity to support big money GOP contributors regardless of the consequences to ordinary Americans.

Yesterday, under pressure from the media, Hunter was forced to fire two of his top South Carolina campaign co-chairmen. "If he had been running for Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan maybe these two would have been appropriate hires," on South Carolina observer told us. The Horry County Auditor, Lois Eargle is well-known for her extremist views and Hunter fired her for anti-immigrant activities that he was aware of when he first appointed her co-chair of his campaign. She's angry and no longer supporting his pointless bid for the White House. "I am so disgusted with politicians who do not have the backbone to stand up for the concerns of the American people," is how she graciously put it. (She had told a Mexican-American mother who had come to her office, concerned about the welfare of her child, to go back to Mexico. When this was reported in the local press, Eargle denied it. Unfortunately for her, there was a tape recording of her bragging about the incident to a roomful of right-wing loons.) Hunter's campaign first tried stonewalling and called her a "great American" before he buckled and realized she was too extreme even for his campaign.

The other co-chair of Hunter's South Carolina campaign, a losing GOP lieutenant governor candidate, Henry Jordan, had made ugly remarks about non-Christian Americans. In 1997 he had been a state school board member and he had disparaged Buddhists and Muslims.

Today most GOP-watchers are focussing on their annual fratricidal get together in DC, where they're all trying to out-do each other for their fealty for bizarre far right ideology that has more in common with Mussolini than with Abraham Lincoln or Thomas Jefferson. But there's another Republican event happening today as well. This controversy doesn't seem to have hurt Hunter in neo-Confederate South Carolina, where Republican primaries are dominated by brainwashed religionist zombies who bring new meaning to the term "low information voter." In today's much-touted GOP straw poll in Spartanburg, Hunter is coming in a very close second (after Giuliani and ahead of McCain).

With 81 of 92 precincts reporting, Giuliani garnered 158 votes. California Rep. Duncan Hunter was a close second with 152 votes, and Arizona Sen. John McCain was third with 116 votes, according to county GOP officials. Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback had 83 votes, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney had 80 votes and Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee rounded out the front-runners with 21 votes.