It most likely was a paid telemarketer who has no connection whatsoever to the RNC.
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Have to disagree with you on this. It’s more likely a phone bank volunteer.
Having worked once upon a time for a fund raising telemarketing firm, it goes something like this.
The callers are briefly trained on a script that proceeds step by step on a response tree.
1. Hello-intro purpose of call
2. First refusal, something on the lines of “I’m not interested” proceed to scriped response.
3. If interested caller reads script that says somehing like, “Great, Can I put you down for $100? If yes script says to ask for credit card number, if no then verify address for pledge.
4. If yes to donate but no to #100 then ask 50, 25 (example)
5. Polite refusal or if issue is raised, most well planned scripts have sccripted dialogues in effort to bring the vic, err, donor back to the fold.
The caller gets paid a small hourly cash rate, say $10/hr. Evening shifts run 3 or 4 hours. But there are tiered cash bonuses that can pay far more; most total dollars pledged; most credit card donations which are processed immediately; highest single donation; most calls; and a few other variants. High Refusal to donation ratios mean you don’t work there anymore.
Point being that you are working for cash in hand at the end of the night. It was easy for me to walk out with $200, $300, or more at the end of the 3 hour night because I did my homework on the potential issues and concerns. And this was in the early 1990’s before google. My best sale was $1000 on a cc. putting $200 in my pocket for that one call. And the call mgr had noobs monitor my asks.
Phone back callers are drones usually ill-informed, chatty without purpose and in the end more expensive than a paid fund raising marketing effort.
And yes, if my caller id doesnt’ catch’em, I politely refuse, ask to be taken off their calling and hang up at the end of the sentence. That counts as a refusal, a dead lead. A hangup, your card goes back into the stack if the caller is timid or afraid of losing the job. You then get called again
I think you are correct. He probably was a committed volunteer.
I intend to continue to politely tell the callers that I will not contribute until I can verbalize what the Republican party stands for.
Many of us like Palin because we know what she stands for. She does not seem to be guided by opinion polls. Hopefully she, or someone like her will be the Republican nominee in 2012. If not, we will be stuck with even more “change”