24.05.12
LARA MARLOWE
WHERE IS John Wayne now that the Republican reception needs him? The movie actor died in 1979, but among Iowa conservatives he’s remembered like the Saviour.
When Newt Gingrich, now the frontrunner for the party’s presidential nomination, visited the four-range wooden house where Wayne was born this autumn, he told the museum’s big cheese, Brian Downes, that as a child he practised walking like the Duke.
“Any aspirant wants that John Wayne association,” Downes says.
Texas governor Rick Perry consciously imitates Wayne. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann compared herself to him when she announced her candidacy last June, saying: “That’s the well-meaning of spirit I have too.”
In recent months, five Republican candidates have visited Winterset, a hamlet of 4,500 souls 40km southwest of Des Moines, Iowa’s largest town. Like Iowa itself, Winterset sometimes votes Democrat, sometimes Republican.
Source: Irish Times