Dems Facing Proven GOP Turnout Machine

AP ^ | 10/14/6 | LIZ SIDOTI

[SmithL]

WASHINGTON -- In the battle for control of Congress, Democrats hope enthusiasm trumps Republican efficiency.

Otherwise, they concede, they will have problems on Nov. 7 as a party still struggling to catch up with the GOP's ability to turn voters out of seeming thin air.

"Makes me green with envy," says Ellen Malcolm, the president of EMILY's List, which backs female candidates who support abortion rights. She was speaking of the Republican Party program that relies on reams of polling data, publicly available information and consumer choice records to identify likely GOP voters in even the most Democratic precincts.

Republicans most recently put their prowess on display in California, where they turned out enough conservatives in June to elect Brian Bilbray to the House, and a few months later in Rhode Island, where they motivated moderates and independents to vote for Sen. Lincoln Chafee in a primary.

[RightWhale]

I see you are from Ohio. You can just as easily see where I am from.

[beckysueb]

GOP's ability to turn voters out of seeming thin air.

Wrong. Thats a dem trick. The Republican voters are there. Just quieter than the moonbats. We do our talking where it counts, in the voting booth.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Poweline is saying it is gonna be bad....for Republicans,

[festus]

Republicans also show up for work and pay bills and have photo id's etc. without anyone to make sure they do so.

Maybe the Dems need to learn that depending on the non-dependable slacker class is not a good long range plan ?

[ModelBreaker]

This is a bloody joke. The dems have always had the better GOTV machine, fueled by massive union footwork augmented by various idiots. They control their precincts and control the vote in their pricincts. They make sure all dems vote, whether they show up or not.

The GOP county party structures are laughably inefficient. All infighting. Most precinct captains worry far more about being the captain than actually doing any work.

What is different is that in 2002, the GOP started to work GOTV by going around the county structure and has had some success with the 96 hour victory teams for federal and statewide elections. This is good in one way--federal and statewide R's get elected.

But it is very bad in another way. The 96 hours focuses on national and federal elections. Our statehouse representation in CO has collapsed since 2002 with no GOTV for locals. Plus, it has centralized power in the national party and the financiers of the state party to the detriment of conservatives.

[Mercat]

I shouldn't be amused but it is a pretty funny way to put it.

[dr_who_2]

I was mocking Democrats, not Republicans. As for the Republican side of the aisle, I have realistic expectations. I'm already disappointed in what the GOP has done with their majority over the past decade (not all that much). Depending on the power of incumbency hasn't helped things. How big a majority do they need, combined with the presidency, before they finally start doing what we all wanted them to do back in 1994? A bigger majority helps, but if their tactics match their strategy and their strategy matches their core beliefs and their core beliefs is in line with the most of the people who post here, they would win where it counts most.

[dr_who_2]

IMHO, the chief benefit to a bigger majority would be that it could strangle the Democrat party into irrelevance, which would help matters, but only so much. It's getting to the point that the party most responsible for what's wrong with our government is the Incumbent Party.

[dr_who_2]

Yep, Rock the Vote was just another attempt to get stupid people to vote (Democrat).

[dufekin]

The Republicans have a secret recipe for creating voters from microscopic smidgens that Democrats deride as "thin air" because they simply do not understand the process. Let me enlighten them.

(1) Join one man and one woman in holy matrimony before Almighty God.

(2) Merge one sperm cell from man and one egg cell from female to form fetus.

(3) Incubate fetus in body of female for nine months without committing abortion or infanticide.

(4) Both man and woman rear the resulting child for eighteen years.

[LS]

Ok, my misunderstanding. However, you know, then, that the nature of the Constitution was to PROHIBIT rapid change, and it is precisely this which we have been battling. My estimate is that to get what we want, we need 40 CONSERVATIVES in the senate, and about 40% of the House Republicans to be conservatives. That means in the Senate we need close to 60 GOP votes. You have to provide enough cover for the lamebrains that every once in a while they can do the right thing and say they "had to," and still throw the RINOs some social issue votes.

Conservatives get all whipped up about what the GOP "hasn't done," without remembering it is precisely the intent of the Constitution to force groups/factions/parties to come back, year after year, to build bigger majorities for a change. Aside from the Civil War, when fully half of the Congress---and virtually all of the opposition---was gone, and the Great Depression, where the mandate for "doing something" was so great and the majorities so large, it really takes about 40 years to get important issues acted upon. The Great Society was still needed by the Dems DESPITE having the FDR blitzkrieg 30 years earlier.

[dr_who_2]

I would say there isn't much in the constitution about political patronage, entitlements, pork barrel spending, gerrymandering, and so-called "campaign finance reform". As for the bicameral legislature issue, that does slow things down a little, but not as much when you have a President in the majority party and not as much when you have extra-constitutional senate rules to contend with.

[LS]

Come on. Patronage was invented almost exclusively by Martin Van Buren, Andrew Jackson, and the Dems in the 1820s as a means to win elections, and the Whigs, then Republicans, had to copy it to get elected. Gerrymandering was of course in the Constitution, named after Elbridge Gerry, one of the FOUNDERS!

Read the first four chapters of my book, "A Patriot's History of the United States."

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1595230017/ref=pd_ecc_rvi_1/104-0426693-1426353?%5Fencoding=UTF8

We cover this in great detail. SLOW change is the way the Founders wanted it. Every mechanism was designed to slow the system down: staggered elections of house/senate, only electing 1/3 of the senate in a given year, filibusters, etc.

[webheart]

In fact, if anybody is running the Republican Party at all it's not real obvious.

I get a real chuckle out of that one.

[kempo]

In the past few years the democrats have not contributed anything to the war effort. As a matter of fact, they have done nothing but bad mouth this country, its leader, accused our soldiers of using terrorist tactics, and torturing prisoners.
I think the majority of the American people will go to the polls to vote against these bastards.

[madison10]

What the Dems see: Lots of pro-Dem/Lib signs in yards.

What Repubs see: No pro-Dem sign = a conservative afraid to put out a pro-Republican sign because a Brown-shirt,radical Lib will vandalize it.

All is NOT as it appears.

[dr_who_2]

Come on. Patronage was invented almost exclusively by Martin Van Buren, Andrew Jackson, and the Dems in the 1820s as a means to win elections, and the Whigs, then Republicans, had to copy it to get elected. Gerrymandering was of course in the Constitution, named after Elbridge Gerry, one of the FOUNDERS!

It would be understating things to say that something that originated with pre-Roosevelt (Franklin or Theodore) states rights "Dems" has really caught on since then. Slow decay is of course preferable to cataclysmic change, but that's beside the point. In some cases, it's postponing the inevitable and making the problem worse, decade by decade, and there have been plenty already. "Worse", as in endanging the republic wanted by the founders, those fellows you lionize when it's convenient to.

[Mr Rogers]

No kidding. I've NEVER been contacted by republicans trying to get me to go vote.

Then again, maybe they've figured out they don't need to get me out - that I can find my way to the voter's booth on my own - and put the effort elsewhere!

[eureka!]

"The AssPress bias machine is really cranking it out today. They must have seen some truly disturbing poll numbers to be in this much panic.

Not the first lowering expectations article from the presstitutes of recent. Good sign. May the circle jerkers at DU rue November 8th in a big way.....

[Mr Rogers]

Don't forget - at least half of Dem voters are too stupid to figure out what R & D mean...which suggests we get 25% of their paid voters.

Of course, in some states, the dems rely on the dead - VERY reliable, the dead are. They vote just like you want them, and in any required numbers!