Senator George Allen is the only person in Virginia who wears cowboy boots. It's a warm and bright spring day in the swampy southeastern Virginia town of Wakefield, site of the annual Virginia political fest known as Shad Planking. Once a whites-only event where state Democrats picked their nominees, Shad Planking is now a multiracial affair where candidates from both parties come to show off their regular-guy bona fides and trade lighthearted barbs. Beer flows freely. Knots of tailgaters gossip about state politics. In a clearing amid tall pines, shad is cooked on long wooden boards. Though the two Democrats fighting for a shot to challenge Allen this year in his Senate reelection campaign both show up for the event, Allen clearly owns the crowd, as the sea of royal blue allen t-shirts and baseball caps makes clear. The senator has emerged as the principal conservative alternative to John McCain in the early jockeying among 2008 Republican presidential candidates, and today's event is a reminder of what conservatives love about him.

But nobody else wears cowboy boots. The guy passing out the stickers that say i support confederate history month is in sneakers. The libertarian who asks me to ask Allen about industrial hemp and abolition of the IRS is in very sensible shoes. The pink and pudgy sports-radio host drawling friendly questions at Allen is in loafers. A guy walks up to Allen and sticks a piece of paper in his hand. "Some people are handing out these, saying you aren't pro-gun enough," he tells the senator, a little menacingly. I look down at his feet. High-tops.

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