GOP MESSAGE GETS GOOD RECEPTION IN DEMOCRAT COUNTIES

The key election win that put Missouri Senate Republicans in the majority for the first time since 1948 came in the once-overwhelmingly Democratic counties of Northeast Missouri known as Little Dixie. It's a seat no GOPer has ever held. Typical is Monroe County, the only Missouri county to prefer George McGovern in his landslide 1972 loss to Nixon. A longtime GOP operative said to me as the returns came in, "Peter, we're winning Democratic counties with a Republican message."

The winning GOP coalition is a foolproof one for rural and small-town America: Farm Bureau. Second Amendment-rights enthusiasts, represented by the National Rifle Association, with the voice of Moses in radio ads. Small business, as typified by the National Federation of Independent Business. The Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Associated Industries of Missouri. And then there's the pro-life movement, yes, especially the right-to-lifers appalled at the Democratic nominee's ferocious pro-abortion stand. For the record, the Democratic nominee had voted with the late Gov. Mel Carnahan on partial-birth abortion and fought me tenaciously as I moved that bill toward passage.

This isn't my grandfathers' Democratic Party, and the new electoral map of Missouri conclusively makes the case.

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White (House) Trash: Surely, the trashing of the White House by outgoing Clinton staffers -- our house, the people's house, hallowed ground if there ever is any -- is the fitting coda to eight years of Clintonism. From obscenities scrawled on the walls in magic markers to porn stuff on the computers, from pranks to vicious vandalism, truly, they know no shame.

Think of it: The house where Lincoln paced the floors during the dark days of the Civil War, humbling himself and praying for God's guidance through that agony. The house where Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt led this country to such great victories, where Woodrow Wilson and Harry Truman wrote their names into the history books. One report estimates there's something like $200,000 of damage to our property, maybe more.

Perfect. One recalls that like Truman, Ronald Reagan never came into the Oval Office without his coat and tie on, and kept these on while he was there, so filled was he with little-boy awe by his surroundings. Clinton was known to lead a pack of his jogging buddies right into the Oval Office in shorts and running shoes, fleeing the steamy Washington summer humidity, as one and all dripped perspiration on the expensive carpet.

Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis repeatedly stressed during the 1988 campaign that "a fish rots from the head down." What an example. And what stories the help, the security staff and the FBI will have to tell us all.

We have come a long way from John Adams' famous prayer about the White House -- something like, "May none but good and decent men live here" -- to this. Truly, there never has been any like Bill and Hillary Clinton and the crowd they brought to town, mauling women and young girls right and left, holding a fire sale for pardons -- including one for a convicted child molester -- as the march of time finally forced their departure. May there never be again.

George Will is exactly right: Bill Clinton isn't the worst president ever. Just the very worst man ever to be president.

~Peter Kinder is assistant to the president of Rust Communications and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.