WSJ: Bush's Big Priority: Energize Conservative Christian Base

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Mobilization Plan

Bush's Big Priority: Energize Conservative Christian Base

Unusual Strategy Plays Down Importance of Swing Vote As Demographics Shift

A Coordinator in Each Church

By JACKIE CALMES and JOHN HARWOOD
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
August 30, 2004; Page A1

(snip)

In the tight 2004 race, no group is more important to Mr. Bush than evangelicals and Christian conservatives. As Republicans gather for their national convention in New York starting today, these religious conservatives are at the heart of a Bush campaign that is turning traditional general-election strategy on its head. Instead of focusing on undecided swing voters, Bush advisers are putting top priority on maximizing voter turnout among conservative constituencies already disposed to back the president. Behind the new strategy lies the story of a changing America, and of a campaign scrambling to keep up.

The nation's face is being reshaped in ways that aren't helpful to the Bush effort. The Hispanic population is exploding in size, and Hispanic voters are heavily Democratic. Other nonwhite ethnic groups are also growing. If all demographic groups split their votes this fall as they did in 2000, the Bush team estimates that Mr. Bush would finish with three million fewer votes than Democratic candidate John Kerry. In 2000, Mr. Bush lost to Al Gore by 500,000 votes in the popular vote. The growth in Hispanics largely accounts for the bigger gap... Republicans spoke hopefully of "security moms." Yet polls show the gap has widened again... Many Arab-Americans and Muslims, who once seemed an emerging Republican constituency, are upset over Iraq... Polls show roughly half of seniors oppose the (Medicare prescription drug) law, and a majority oppose him.

(snip)

Among the group of latent Bush supporters, the president's strategists have focused particularly on white Christian conservatives. Exit polls of actual 2000 voters show conservative Christians making up 14% of the electorate, but Republican Party surveys suggest that the same group is typically closer to 19% of voters. From that, Mr. Rove concludes that some five million conservative Christians failed to turn out four years ago. Because 82% of those who voted backed Mr. Bush, the nonvoters represented a missed opportunity in the range of four million votes. Moreover, Christian conservatives are part of one big demographic trend that is working in Republicans' favor -- the rapid development of "exurbs" beyond the suburbs of big cities. Married families with children, many of them conservative Christians, are flocking to these exurbs but are often slow to register and vote... Such regions include fast-growing Lake and Osceola counties outside Orlando, Fla.; Minnesota's Scott County outside the Twin Cities; St. Croix County outside Eau Claire, Wis.; and Deschutes County around Bend, Ore.

(snip)

Warren County, which sits between Cincinnati and Dayton and increasingly is home to high-earners who work in the cities, is No. 52 on the Census Bureau's list of 100 fastest-growing counties. It's the sort of place another Republican campaign would take for granted: 95% white, dominated by families with children, with a median household income of about $60,000 -- nearly 40% above the national average. Warren County's 2000 vote went more than 2-to-1 for Mr. Bush. Yet, mindful of the need to get that vote out in big numbers, the president stopped in the county seat of Lebanon in May on a bus tour through Ohio, which is the one of the most important swing states targeted by both the Bush and Kerry campaigns.

More..
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109382546485804152,00.html


Write to Jackie Calmes at [e-mail] and John Harwood at [e-mail]

[aquart]

1. Wow. Things must be really bad if THEY have no enthusiasm.

Tee hee.

[Lefty48197]

2. Putting them in a box and taping it shut during the convention

is no way to fire up the hard core right wing base.