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Red America After the election, a Republican campaign office in Tennessee is closed down as one ardent supporter wonders what has happened to the America she thought she knew.
Nov. 9, 2012
Beth Cox, 44, spent two days clearing out and cleaning a rented office space for the Sumner County Republican headquarters just after the election. Volunteer Gary Hunt takes down the banner that had adorned the building. Cox is a Christian Republican who felt disappointed and discouraged by the results of the election.
Michael S. Williamson
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The Washington Post
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Nov. 9, 2012
Beth Cox wipes down a commemorative emblem from the 2001 inauguration of George W. Bush as volunteer Delmas Brake stops by for a visit at the Republican campaign headquarters in Hendersonville, Tenn.
Michael S. Williamson
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The Washington Post
Nov. 9, 2012
GOP volunteer Gary Hunt dismantles a desk that had been used at the Republican headquarters. Here in the heart of Red America, many spent the days after the election grieving not only for themselves and their candidate but also for a country they now believe has gone wildly off track. The days after Barack Obama's reelection gave birth to a saying in Central Tennessee: Once was a slip, but twice is a sign.
Michael S. Williamson
/
The Washington Post
Nov. 9, 2012
Beth Cox is a member of the school board and a volunteer who had committed to Mitt Romney early in the Republican primaries. She had run the small GOP campaign headquarters in Sumner County by herself for six days a week during the last four months. She had been the first in line to vote on the first day of early voting.
Michael S. Williamson
/
The Washington Post
Nov. 9, 2012
Beth Cox shows some of her political button collection at her home. She is a big fan of George W. Bush and was thankful for the conservative appointees he made to the Supreme Court. She was hoping that a Romney win would lead to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Roe v. Wade .
Michael S. Williamson
/
The Washington Post
Nov. 9, 2012
Beth Cox gingerly folds a small American flag that flew outside the Sumner County Republican campaign office as she cleans it up and closes it down. At left, reflected in the window, is the rented trailer used to haul the office furniture away.
Michael S. Williamson
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The Washington Post
Nov. 9, 2012
Beth Cox checks for messages as she was just about finished cleaning out the office. She had planned to celebrate in the office by hosting a dance party and selling Romney souvenirs. But instead she was packing those souvenirs into boxes, which would be donated to a charity that sent clothes to South America.
Michael S. Williamson
/
The Washington Post
Nov. 9, 2012
Gallatin, Tenn., is the county seat of an area that votes dependably Republican. Mitt Romney won 60 percent of the vote statewide and 70 percent in Sumner County.
Michael S. Williamson
/
The Washington Post
Nov. 9, 2012
Many Republicans in Gallatin and other parts of Sumner County were shocked by the election results and had to question what they thought they knew about the nation. In a single election night, parts of the country had legalized marijuana, approved gay marriage and resoundingly reelected a president who Beth Cox worried would "accelerate our decline."
Michael S. Williamson
/
The Washington Post
Nov. 9, 2012
Signs were returned to the campaign office of mayoral candidate Tommy Elston who ran — and lost — to incumbent Scott Foster. All four candidates for mayor were Republican.
Michael S. Williamson
/
The Washington Post
Nov. 9, 2012
A sign sponsored by the tea party stands along Interstate 40 between Nashville and Knoxville. Everything in Beth Cox's version of America had confirmed her predictions of a Mitt Romney win on Election Day: the confident anchors on Fox News; the Republican pollsters so sure of their data; the two-hour line outside her voting precinct, where Romney supporters hugged and honked for her handmade signs during a celebration that lasted until the results started coming in after sundown. Romney's thorough defeat had come more as a shock than as a disappointment.
Michael S. Williamson
/
The Washington Post
Nov. 9, 2012
While Hendersonville has quaint sections of town that are rural and sparsely populated, it also has typical suburban sprawl because it is an outer suburb of Nashville.
Michael S. Williamson
/
The Washington Post
Nov. 9, 2012
This bucolic meadow is next door to the Long Hollow Baptist Church where Beth Cox and her family attend services. The Southern Baptist church draws 7,000 people on Sundays, and church literature describes marriage as "the uniting of one man and one woman."
Michael S. Williamson
/
The Washington Post
Nov. 9, 2012
Victor Cato, left, and Willie Fisher, fishing off an old bridge near Hendersonville, know that they live in a heavily Republican area. Cato, a retired road construction worker, said, "I was thinking that maybe it was a waste to vote, but I did it anyway." Fisher is a retired nuclear plant worker who is a big fan of President Obama. "Romney doesn't care about folks like us," he said. "He was just for the rich guys. We need to give Obama time. He inherited a real mess."
Michael S. Williamson
/
The Washington Post
Nov. 9, 2012
Sumner County is one of the five most affluent counties in the state. It's not uncommon to see expensive homes being built in the largely Republican area. The GOP won 95 percent of local races in the state and secured a supermajority in the state legislature.
Michael S. Williamson
/
The Washington Post
Nov. 9, 2012
An American flag hangs on the front porch of the Cox family home in Hendersonville. Local Republicans have encouraged Beth Cox to run for state office, but she didn't want to give up her volunteering, her scrapbooking, her weekend getaways with her daughters — her "Godly life," she said.
Michael S. Williamson
/
The Washington Post
Nov. 9, 2012
Todd Cox horses around with daughters Chelsea, center, and Emily before the girls left for a Christian weekend camp in Kentucky. Beth Cox, right, says her faith provided strength and stability during her parents' rocky divorce and then helped her transform from a stubbornly independent woman — the "feminist, I-am-woman, hear-me-roar type," she said — into a mother and a wife who respected what she called the "natural order of the household."
Michael S. Williamson
/
The Washington Post
Nov. 9, 2012
Beth Cox, left, gets a hug from Stacie Dooley, a pastor's wife at the Long Hollow Baptist Church. As they hugged, Cox said, "I'm still in mourning over the election." They were helping register young women for a fall camp. Cox says she can sense liberalism creeping closer, and she worries about what Red America would look like after four more years. "God put us in the desert," she said. "We are in the desert right now."
Michael S. Williamson
/
The Washington Post
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