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I freely admit I know nothing about grass roots or political precinct organizing. However, you bring up an interesting point that reminds me of something going on in Indiana.

First of all, in the last gubernatorial election McIntosh ran a terrible campaign. THREE offices, constant time eaten up in trips and locating people, lack of message (except for property taxes), poor event management, lack of security, etc. etc. He lost, even though Bush won Indiana by a large margin.

Now comes this election cycle. The new head of the Indiana GOP was McIntosh's fianancial guy, who was also a Pioneer for Bush. The last State Chairman "retired" after the election. So that means Bush's GOP guy is running the state GOP.

Mitch Daniels wants to run for governor. He is Bush's choice. But Bush doesn't SAY so exactly. What has happened so far?

The state GOP guy held a little meeting with the big-buck donors where they could meet Mitch. The guy who ran for liuetenant governor with McIntosh, Murray Clark, has abandoned his own gubernatorial campaign and is going to chair Mitch's campaign, and he has alread announced that he won't take the Lt. gov. position on the ticket.

That leaves three people opposing Daniels...McIntosh, a southern Indiana mayor, and a conservative activist. My bet is that the mayor will be asked to be on the ticket as lt. gov., pulling votes from southern Indiana. That will leave the far right of the party divided between McIntosh and the activist. Neither will win.

I think I see the White House in this, and I think it is a good thing. Lately the Indiana party has been divided about equally between old-timers who think it is nothing but a job, and conservative activists who do not understand how to get the middle to vote for them.

It will be interesting to see if my prediction comes true.

There is huge white house effort to bring grass roots organization to the Republicans. As you know, my Dad and Uncles were very active and held major positions in the Democratic party. When I became a Republican it was unbelievable to me the number of people who told me it was impossible to do what the Democrats had been doing to win elections for a hundred years. It is a lot of work. It is a very large amount of difficult work. I ask are we willing to grant that Democrats have a better work ethic? Rowe and Bush are not.

And now a word from our sponsor.

Harry Truman said the only thing new under the political sun is the political history you don't know.

I go back to the 1968 campaign for a review of what happened to a mislead candidate in that primary race. The 'tator take on history and the Kerry Okie

It seems to me that claiming that Bush has mislead you is a very poor strategy for Kerry or any Democrat to pursue.

However, in all honesty, I have to admit that the 'tator has been miss lead a few times... but I was much younger, and she was very very beautiful.