Get out the vote

Scott Elliott, who blogs at Election Projection, has this to say about the 2006 race:

In 2000, ineffective GOP mobilization efforts and disaffected GOP voters afforded Al Gore 500,000 more votes than George W. Bush. In 2002 and 2004, a transformation of miraculous proportions took place in the Republican get-out-the-vote machine. It culminated in the GOP control of both congressional chambers and the re-election of a Republican president who received over 3 million more votes than his opponent and nearly 8 million more than any previous presidential candidate in history.

P-a-r-t-i-c-i-p-a-t-i-o-n. Without even the pretense of a real plan for our future, the Democrats have hung their hopes on a depressed conservative base. It is the only way they can win. Swing voters mean little in the polarized political world in which we find ourselves. And the effects of that polarization are magnified in traditionally low-turnout mid-term elections where only the active and energized take part.

The task for our opponents, then, is to win the war of emotional energy. So much of what we are seeing and hearing now from the talking heads in the media and the Democratic party is designed to accomplish two things. First, they hope the never-ending dirge of bad news and scandal will squeeze whatever small number of votes it can from a diminishing pool of fence-sitters. Second, and many times more importantly, they seek to demoralize and deflate the conservative faithful. For they know that every vote not cast by a disgruntled and despairing Republican Eyore is one less vote they have to overcome in their quest for control.

Are you worried about November? Do you feel a growing sense of defeat within you every time another segment is aired on the network news about the escalating violence in Iraq? Perhaps your energy and excitement level take yet another hit every time your newspaper publishes an article exposing more bad news in the Foley scandal. Make no mistake; that is exactly what those stories are designed to do.

Don't let it happen. I implore us all to resist that temptation to be driven into mopey political reclusion. Fend off the Eyore inside that wants to sap your drive to win. For sure our leadership is far from ideal, but think about the alternative. If we lose the House, George W. Bush will be impeached. If we lose this Senate, only David Souter clones will have a prayer of filling any vacancies in the Supreme Court during Bush's final two years and we'll lose by default the critical battle we are now winning in the judiciary. The implications of this election when viewed through the lens of our country's future history are enormous. We cannot afford to lose.

The good news is we don't have to lose. This is a tough political climate for success, but we are well-prepared. That infrastructure which grew from the minds of Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman into a vote-generating behemoth is not dead. It is still here, still alive. This election "like the one in 2004" will be about nothing more than getting out the vote. Rhetoric and news cycles play their part, but all the best political sound bites and all the worst news clips will only impact the outcome of this election as much as we allow it to.

He is correct. I also note that he is still projecting that the GOP will retain control of the House.

Here is another fun fact, the Democrats' internal polling shows that the Foley affair is only having any impact in 6 races and one of them is the one in Foley's district. According to The American Spectator the Foley business was supposed to be the Democrats major "October Surprise" to be sprung about 10 days before the election, but they had to pull the trigger on it too early, so early that it will probably not be a factor in November:

One of the stories going around Democrat Party circles is that party operatives like Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and American Family Voices weren't quite ready for primetime with the opposition research materials they had gathered for the 2006 election cycle.

According to one political consultant with ties to the DNC and other party organizations, "I'm hearing the Foley story wasn't supposed to drop until about ten days out of the election. It was supposed the coup de grace, not the first shot."

So why the rush? According to another DNC operative: bad polling numbers across the country. "Bush's national security speeches were getting traction beyond the base, gas prices were dropping, economic outlook surveys were positive. We were seeing bad Democratic numbers in Missouri, Michigan, Washington, Arizona, Florida Pennsylvania, even parts of New York," says the operative. "A month before, we were looking at launching an offensive against Republicans who according to polling barely held a five-seat majority if the election were to be held at the end of August. That was doable for Democrats from September 1 to November 7. But by mid-September, Republicans were back to having held seats for a 15-seat majority. In the Senate, it looked like a wash. We held seats in Florida, Nebraska, picked up seats in Pennsylvania, but that that was about it. They were holding in Missouri and possibly within reach of Maryland and Washington. We were looking at a disaster in the making."

So how to remedy? "You pull out the bright shiny things that distract the average American voter away from the issues we all know they care about -- national security, anti-terrorism -- and focus on the ugly: Foley and Iraq."

"Republicans had to have known we'd be looking to change the national debate," says a House Democrat leadership aide. "You had our leadership looking at cratering polling numbers. A majority within grasp wasn't drifting away, it was being yanked back by Republicans. I wouldn't be surprised if Foley had to be bumped up on the scandal schedule. That makes a lot of sense given where we were two weeks ago, and where we are now."

Get that? When the people actually started paying attention to the issues every last gain that the Democrats has been given by 5 years of relentless attacks by the mainstream media, which has all but dropped even the pretence of objectivity in its blind zeal to harm Republicans and help Democrats, evaporated. All it took was a few weeks of the public looking at the issues with both eyes open and taking seriously what they saw to put the Democrats firmly back into the minority category.

The Jackass Party knows that its only hope of victory comes from distracting the voting public. They know that they cannot offer their program for the nation's future to the American people and expect them to vote for it. All they can do, ALL, is to conceal what they truly believe, smear their opponents and hope that the public gets confused and votes against their interests.

There one bright spot, their one golden hope for a Democrat future is amnesty for illegal aliens and some kind of open borders policy. If they can just flood the nation with ignorant and unskilled peasants who can be placed on welfare they can create a permanent underclass addicted to the dole who will vote Democrats into power for the next century and more.