“No way in hell Rush is right here. There isn’t a single soul I know who likes Hillary...nevermind wants her for President.”
You and your friends are living in la-la land. Right now the Democrats have registered 15% more voters for ‘08 than Republicans. They have more money. They have better organization. They have the media. They have the monolithic black vote and most of the Hispanic vote. They have red states trending leftward like OH and CO and VA. They have Bush fatigue putting wind in their sails. What has the GOP got? It’s got Rudy—and that’s it.
Gee, well as a member of two well-known Conservative organizations known for effective GOTV efforts and registering voters, let me tell you why:
It’s because the GOP grassroots hate the front-runners, Rudy and McCain. Everyone I know is basically protesting right now - we haven’t even gotten the folks who were sworn-in to register voters in 2004 and 2006 to say they’d be willing to help out again. Rudy’s number one criticism/complaint right now is the total absence of a ground game, and that he’s almost void of unpaid volunteers. He has the fewest financial supporters of all major candidates running, and that is no accident. The gun groups and SoCons, who make up the MAJORITY of the GOTV efforts, are unimpressed. Same goes for McCain, who is seen as slightly less Liberal but totally unreliable by the folks I talk to regularly.
If you think Rudy can win, you’d better be certain he can win the Presidency without a ground game, because it will be weak at best. Money only goes so far, and volunteers go much, much further. If the numbers are close by Election Day, which I guarantee they will be, he’s going to lose badly. The Democrats, as you said, will be united and organized and swimming in volunteers from their grassroots organizations. The GOP will be left asking CEOs to go door-to-door. Good luck with that.
And folks like myself who’ve gone to battle for the GOP will be going to battle for someone else in 2008 if Rudy wins the nod. It won’t be just the Buchananite-types looking elsewhere this time around, I guarantee that.
You want to catch-up registering new voters? How about not nominating a guy who makes much of the grassroots want the GOP to lose in 2008, and a whole lot of them apathetic. Would you go out and work your butt off to register new voters for Barrack Obama? No. And there are a lot of folks right now - AND I CAN TELL YOU FIRST HAND - who aren’t going to be working their butts off for Rudy Giuliani.
The press and the polls giveth, and the press and the polls taketh away. Rudy is counting on his positive press and poll numbers to carry the day exclusively. It won’t happen. And when he drops, the folks who are usually there to pick-up the campaign for the GOP won’t be there this time. I swear to God I won’t, for one.