Loyalty Oaths

[freedomburns]

Kerry trains around the midwest and south west and gets stopped by huge rallies in small towns (20000+).  In their scheduled stops there are big flowovers into the streets.  Kerry and Edwards are letting protesters in and the protesters seem to actually motivate the Kerry supporters even more.  

Bush and Cheney however are on Defense speaking in Northern Michagan, Eastern Washington, Virginia and are only attracting small rallies.  Only registered Republicans are allowed into the rallies and even then they have to sign a loyalty oath that swears that they are going to vote for Bush and that the Bush/Cheney campaign can use their name as a supporter.  

Isn't this extreme.  I like the way Kerry is campaigning now.  The local press gives better stories.  Isn't this exclusivity going to hurt Bush.  Independents that aren't let into a Bush speak would seem less likely to vote for him.  Undecided voters don't seem like the type of people that would want to sign loyalty oaths.

This stuff reeks of Stalinist Communism.  The Republican campaign is seriously out of touch if they think this is going to play well with Americans who are not ardent Bush supporters already.  

They have an uphill struggle reaching out to those in the middle or on the fence, and that is the only way that they might win.  Looks really bad for them.

freedomburns

[freedomburns]

Is all this documented somewhere under the wide blue sky by a credible source? I usually don't ask for sources on message boards because it's about talk and discussion and so forth, but I got to ask for a source on this one.

Read all about it in The Boston Globe doubting Thomas:

Bush-backers-only policy riles voters at RNC rallies

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/08/09/bush_backers_only_policy_riles_voters_at_rnc_rallies?mode=PF

freedomburns

[freedomburns]

But screw the independependent voter right.  They may not have cheered at all the right places.  The independents have nothing to do with the GOTV vote.  LOL

I have been thinking about this system and why the Republican strategists use it, khirkib, and I think you have hit on it.  They are diabolically ingenious and they would not do something unless they were pretty sure it was going to work for them.

By only accepting people who are willing to sign their names on a loyalty oath and a pledge on how they will vote three months from now, no matter what happens, the GOP strategists are guaranteeing a crowd filled with zealots who will cheer like madmen on every applause line.

This way they know that when the clips play on the local news and the whole speech on C-SPAN, all those independents and undecideds will see a crowd of enthusiastic supporters cheering on our President.  They will match the crowd to the right-sized venue so that every seat is filled and it sounds great.  

Then they pray that a lot people will just watch some of it on TV and be impressed enough to jump on the bandwagon and get behind such an obviously popular guy who can get the people so excited.  Then they also hope that not many of them will also read the story in the paper about the paranoid exclusionary policy that keeps out even WWII vets who don’t sign.  

They are probably right, because 80% of people get their news from the TV and only 15% from the paper.  They are probably gaining votes this way...(?)

freedomburns