Hewitt - After the third night of broadcasting from Colorado --tonight from the Pete Coors HQ in Denver-- I joined Governor Owens, Senator Wayne Allard and Congressmen Tancredo and Beuprez in the most massive GOTV training effort I have seen in 30 years of campaign watching and participation. (First campaign: Congressman Paul Cronin's loss to Paul Tsongas in Massachusetts in 1974.)
More than 2,000 GOTV volunteers spent hours getting instruction on maximizing their effectiveness over the next 96 hours. Similar rallies training sessions were held around the state. Coors takes a lead into Tuesday, and this organization will surprise Democrats on the 2nd as it did Democrats two years ago who thought they had retired Wayne Allard. It doesn't help the Democratic candidate Ken Salazar that Kerry suckered him into a reverse coattails appearance last week and then pulled his campaign out of the state, leaving the anti-gun liberal label on Salazar, but none of the DNC/Kerry money or staff.
The secret to Colorado's success in party building? I was greeting radio listeners until the last one left --without their support, there'd be no show, so I make a habit of staying until everyone has had a chance to say hello and tell me what a fine job Duane does.
That usually makes me the last to leave an event, but not tonight. Bill Owens was still there in the nearly empty ballroom, and Pete Coors had left only a minute earlier. Any volunteer that wanted the nominee's or the Governor's time got it. That's why Colorado's organization is the envy of the country's. The folks at the top appreciate and demonstrate that appreciation for every volunteer's commitment.
A note to my media colleagues. If any federal race is close next week --though it is increasingly looking like the presidential contest won't be (and guest Instapundit Michael Totten tells you why, succinctly)-- you may want to book Congressman Bob Beauprez as a studio guest. Bueprez had the closest race in the Congress two years ago, winning by a total of 121 votes. That result took five weeks to achieve because the result depended on the counting of "provisional ballots" that will be a feature of every race this year. Two years ago the left hadn't figured out the incredible mischief potential of these ballots, but don't count on that this year.
Beauprez's 7th District included "only" parts of three counties, each of which was administered by competent elections official, each of whom received the same set of instructions from an experienced Secretary of State. All three interpreted the instructions differently as to which ballots would be counted. Litigation followed. Beauprez alone spent a million bucks. It is a warning about what may descend next week, and almost certainly will in most of the battleground states unless Bush rolls up the early margin he needs to demoralize the legion of trial lawyers whose entire careers have been spent separating claims into the categories of dogs and winners.
As for the bin Laden tape --it ticks off Republicans across the board because it is rightly viewed as a butcher's threat to kill some more if Bush is re-elected. Whether it changes even one vote remains to be seen, but it certainly raises an already intense level of commitment to the president's re-election among his supporters to impossible-to-surpass levels. As a result, look for the surfacing of "Rove-did-it" theories at TalkingPointsMemo and WashingtonMonthly sometime soon, in the same category of the nutter "Bush was wired" postings. The Belmont Club analyzes the tape here. RogerLSimon here. I am still waiting for The Fourth Rail. TruthLaidBear has a great round-up. My take: A shattered movement's shattered leader trys to take Bush with him, combined with some "Hitler in the bunker, March, 1945" ravings.
A final note this evening. Congressman Tom Tancredo and I have had our disagreements over the years, but he may have been the most riveting radio guest of the year this afternoon when he recounted his trip this fall to Beslan after the massacre. The Congressman, who lives close to Columbine High School, imposed on his Russian-speaking wife to travel with him to bring messages of shared grief from a community that had also been traumatized. The heart-felt grief the congressman displayed in recounting the stories of the victims and the awful reality of the construction of a new cemetery for the victims touched many of my listeners. As did his warning that the same sort of Islamist fanatic would gladly perpetrate the same sort of massacre here if not prevented from doing so. Radioblogger has the links to the Congressman's web journal and photos of his trip. Astonishingly, not only has MSM not reported on his journey, neither has the local media made much of it. His account deserves all the attention the myth of the mising munitions didn't, but got anyway. |
