In the last coupla days, heard reports of Dubya’s volunteers calling up prospective voters, and when they explained they they were set on Forbes, Keyes, whoever… the campaign staffer would politely break off, and the voter would get a call moments later from a GOP group explaining how a vote for [whoever] wasn’t good for the Party. Shades of the old USSR !?#@!$! My question:
a) Did I hear this wrong ? b) If not, is’nt there some problem with the sudden conversion of phone lists from a specific candidates’ research to the party’s general use ?
I was wonderin’ about the propriety of a “hard-money”-funded campaign issue, i.e. GWB’s team, sharing data immediately with “soft-$” Party efforts… it’d be ok if the database was provided equally to McCain, Forbes, Keyes, etc…, which it apparently wasn’t. And in order to have turned the calls around so immediately, GWB’s campaign and the GOP team would be actually sharing a common database, perhaps even the same office.
I guess my “question” revolves around the propriety of an unfair advantage for any given party candidate… as if the party nomination didn’t involve the primary voters at all. OK, the cynical will laugh at that last bit of political naivete, but I was thinking this particular set of facts, if indeed true, doesn’t even pass the laugh test. Do the campaign finance rules cover this ?
My father had been a contributor to a politcal party, and after he died I started getting his mail. you would be astonished at the number of organizations that have similar sounding names. The point is that just because you got a call from someone calling themselves “The National Committee of Concerned Republicans” or something like that, it doesn’t mean that they are an official Republican Party or Republican National Committee organization. more than likely it was just a shadow organization for GWB trying to get in one last pitch for their guy.
My WAG would be that the second call wasn’t actually from the official Republican Party of Iowa, but from a paper “group” affiliated with Jr.'s campaign and working out of the same offices. I imagine their name was carefully crafted to give the impression that it was the party organization itself doing the calling.
I’ll give you a related “for example” from my own fine state of New Jersey: the primary ballots most years have several lines, headed something like this: Passaic County Regular Republican Organization Passaic County Republican Regular Organization Republican Regular Organization of Passaic County County of Passaic Republican Regular Organization
The point is to confuse the voter into thinking your group is as legitimate as the party organization, and sow confusion as to which group actually is the real party organization.
…but when you get blue, and you’ve lost all your dreams, there’s nothing like a campfire and a can of beans!
