by Rod D. Martin
November 9, 2006

With the zeal of converts, Republican leaders thought they’d found the magic bullet. They could ignore the big, visionary stuff that characterized Reagan-era campaigns — and Bush’s presidential runs too — because they could turn out the vote. Yea, on our conference calls, the leadership regaled us with the (genuinely amazing) number of person-to-person contacts they were generating — far more, in fact, than 2004 — and how all of this was going to save the day, or most of it anyway.

They couldn’t have been more wrong. A turnout effort cannot be better than the message motivating the turnout. This is Rule Number One.

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