Gard said his job is to "turn off the television news" and "stay focused" on his own campaign.
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Speaking to the Republican faithful the other day, John Gard tried to rev up the crowd.
"This is a convention, right? Not a funeral, right?" said the Assembly speaker, who is running for Congress.
It was just a warm-up line, but it captured something in the Republican mood, with President Bush slumping, war and gas prices eating at voters and the party's conservative base upset over immigration and spending.
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"I think enthusiasm is down," Marc Savard, the party chairman for Door County, said of rank-and-file conservatives. "People are frustrated."
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Today, it's not hard to find Bush voters with the second-term blues.
"I'm disappointed. I thought he seemed to be a pretty strong leader. I think he's sending mixed messages, and he's not getting it done," said Judy Diedrich of Kaukauna.
In conversations here, the concerns and complaints bubble up. It's a list that pollsters can recite in their sleep: the cost of health care, the price of gas, the holes in the border, the course of the war.
When a reporter went knocking on doors in the district with Gard one day and Democratic state Rep. Tom Nelson on another, health care came up in nearly every conversation.
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