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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (79332)	10/20/2004 11:39:44 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793927

Hewitt - The New York Times discovers GOTV. I worked my first GOTV in 1974, in a losing effort to keep then Massachusetts Congressman Paul Cronin in office as the riptide of Watergate washed out so many Republicans from the House. It didn't work --he was beaten by a young Paul Tsongas-- but the basics of GOTV haven't changed much in 30 years, though the technology has improved tremendously. GOTV success is proportional to the commitment of the people manning it because it requires attention to detail and repeated attempts to contact folks who haven't shown up at the polls. You can buy some GOTV success, but not nearly the success that comes with combination of sincere commitment and some smarts. This is why the Bush-Cheney '04's vaunted 96 hour operation will almost certainly trump the left's collection of activists, though the union guys know how to do this. Keep in mind Dean's orange-hatted brigades in Iowa and their miserable showing last January. They had enthusiasm, but no technique. Replacing them with crack heads isn't going to help. It is also tough to fill the volunteer slots when you are losing, like filling seats in a .500 team's stadium at the end of the season, which is why Kerry keeps spinning his slide in the polls, and why the early call of Florida for Gore in 2000 hurt GOP candidates across the country as entire battalions of GOTV volunteers walked away. Not only is Bush bringing momentum to his volunteers, they also have a collective desire for some payback for having been conned by the nets four years ago. Advantage: Bush. Bush in Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin today; Kerry in Iowa, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Bush in three blue states, Kerry is two blues and a red. Advantage Bush. Kerry has given up everywhere Bush won in '00 except Florida and Ohio, and he keeps going back to my old home town area of Youngstown-Warren, where the mayor of Youngstown --a Dem-- has endorsed Bush and where the Catholic vote will never go his way. These are real family people, some of whom have lived in the valley for five or more generations. Many could have pulled the lever for Gephardt because Gephardt supported the war and wouldn't have spent the last six months undermining the effort in Iraq. They can't be cajoled into Kerry's camp by fake fears of social security privatization, fake fears of a draft, or concern over the flu shot shortage for healthy men and women. I also suspect that Laura is a huge plus for the president in this very traditional area. The talk around northeast Ohio today will be of the 3-3 Browns' acquisition of Antonio Bryant, not John Kerry's health care plan. And if he makes a Lambert Field-like blunder in this neck of the woods (they say "neck-of-the-woods there, in the heart of the Western Reserve) he'll get laughed out of town. Kerry's biggest problem is Measure 1, a protection of marriage measure that also may ban civil unions. Said the Plain Dealer last week: "Among Issue 1's supporters are Auditor Betty Montgomery, Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, Treasurer Joe Deters, the Ohio Conference of Catholic Bishops and a coalition of black ministers from Cleveland." Kerry has flipped flopped all over the same sex marriage issue, and is helped that Governor Taft and some other big Republicans are opposing the measure, but the black church in Ohio --and across the country-- is heavily in favor of protecting marriage. Kerry's waffling has cost him dramatically in the African-American community as yesterday's poll showed.

To: LindyBill who wrote (79332)	10/20/2004 11:46:44 PM
From: SBHX	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793927

Bob Woodward was on Larry King and noted that Robertson must have misunderstood. In Woodward's interview with Bush before the war, Bush told him he understood there will be 'many' casualties and his hardest job is what to tell their families. Note Woodward was critical of Bush about the missing WMD and other issues.

To: LindyBill who wrote (79332)	10/21/2004 3:19:55 AM
From: Neeka	Respond to of 793927

And he said, Oh, no, our troops are, you know, so well protected, we don't have to worry about that. Balderdash! This meeting took place after we had gone into Afghanistan and we'd lost several soldiers there. Bush knew/knows that our troops would take casualties because they already had in the war in Afghanistan. Not only that, our troops went into Iraq geared up for chemical or bio attacks. The president understood the danger to our troops and realized there could be massive casualties in the event of such an attack. Everyone knows that troops die in war, and to suggest the president didn't is phoney and ridiculous. Robertson is lying imo. M