LAT, Brownstein: Bush Aims to Solidify Base: Kerry Focus on Undecided

[DeepModem Mom]

THE RACE TO THE WHITE HOUSE
Bush Aims to Solidify His Base
Ensuring a large GOP turnout might be more important than winning swing voters, a strategist says. Kerry's focus remains the undecided.

By Ronald Brownstein, Times Staff Writer


WASHINGTON — Even as President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry cross each other's tracks through the same battleground states, their strategies for winning November's election appear to be diverging.

In campaign appearances and advertising purchases, both are still intensely courting the relatively small number of undecided or loosely committed voters.

But the Bush campaign's strategy is focused much more on the possibility that the race will be decided primarily by mobilizing the party faithful in closely fought states, not persuading swing voters....

***

(Matthew Dowd, the Bush campaign's chief strategist) said one of the campaign's top goals is to ensure that Republicans cast as large a share of November's vote as Democrats. Typically, Democrats outnumber Republicans in presidential elections....

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...senior GOP strategists acknowledge that the campaign thinks expanded margins among core Republican constituencies could provide Bush his best chance of winning if most voters who are still undecided late in the campaign follow the usual pattern and break against the incumbent....


http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-strategy22aug22,1,3635747.story?coll=la-home-headlines

[snippy]

1. Interesting article and interesting strategy by Bush.

I have wondered for some time why Bush has been focusing on his base all along. I do not think the the smear tactics by Bush (like the Swift Boat ads) will be as effective in depressing turnout this year as such tactics have been in past elections.

[Frances]

2. My husband says that Bush is condoning the Swift Boat ads

because he is desperate.

It seems to me that if Bush is trying to mobilize his base, he thinks he can't win the majority of the independents.

I think most of Kerry's base would indeed vote for a chimp before they would vote for Bush. In my opinion, Democrats have never been this united since there was a Democratic party. Bush has done the impossible--he has united the Dems.

[The Magistrate]

4. Your Husband Is Right, Ma'am

And that the Republicans are reduced to inflaming their base is the surest indication defeat looms fore them this year. The base really ought to be nailed down by now. There is no question the Democratic base is mobilized fully already. The tremendous number of small contributions received by Sen. Kerry's campaign, and allied organizations such as Move On, establishes that.

In these times, it is impossible to do anything to rouse one's own base without simultaneously rousing the other side's base. This smear aganst Sen. Kerry's Viet Nam service is an excellent illustration: it seems very likely this has enraged and energized more Democrats than Republicans. And there is no doubt it alienates persons who are not yet fully committed to either candidate.

The truth of the matter is there are more of us than there are of them. The last Presidential election showed that, and this one will confirm it in spades.

"An election differs from a civil war only as the bloodless surrender of a force outnumbered in the field differs from Waterloo."

"Stupid men do stupid things, and desperate men do desperate things. We are in for a desperately stupid summer."

"LET'S GO GET THOSE BUSH BASTARDS!"

[Fovea]

3. I don't think that Bush* is mobilizing the base.

I think he is tearing the Repubs apart.
For every already committed anti-intellectual xenophobe Bush plays to, there is a paleocon shuddering in disgust, and regretting the check sent into the RNC.

I think this might be about trying to preserve the majority in the house, where social conservatism is still strong.
But here in Kansas, I can see it failing. Dennis Hastert was at the Borders in Johson County Kansas yesterday, and though I got there a bit late, his book signing looked like a ghost town to me.

Further, I got no challenge in the Border's coffeeshop when I stated that Hastert wore the soiled mantle of Newt Gingrich well. If this was any indication of the popularity and support of supposedly deep red Kansas, There will be a rude surprize for a lot of NeoCons in November.

The wallet of Kansas appears to be in play.

[NoBorders]

5. they are worried about no-shows? Wow.

things must be worse for them than I thought. Seems to me they may be worried about losing too many moderate repubs who won't vote for Kerry, or Bush, so they'll stay home. Hmmm... Is this what their internal polling tells them?