NYT: Crawford residents threatening violence over endorsement

You knew it was going to happen. The conservative backlash against Bush's hometown Lone Star Iconoclast of Crawford, Texas, which renounced its 2000 endorsement of George Bush and instead "wholeheartedly" endorsed John Kerry earlier this month, has been savage:

Mr. Smith, 51, the Iconoclast's snowy-bearded majority owner and fervid Ronald Reagan admirer, said in his cluttered office in nearby Clifton that all three of the newspaper's outlets in Crawford had stopped selling it and that a readers' boycott had cut newsstand and subscription sales to 482 copies a week from 920.

In a note to readers in the Oct. 6 issue, he also said, 'Unfortunately, for The Iconoclast and its publishers there have been threats - big ones including physical harm.'

Death threats for endorsing someone other than the hometown boy... and motivated as much by greed (think tourism dollars) as by politics. It's sad, but predictable.