Here Comes The GOP Stampede
by Joshua Holland, AlterNet.org

The conservatives don't play politics with real grassroots activism. Their top-down style and "buy the movement" approach is better suited for Astroturf – and this week, they're on the march.

This weekend, the Republican Party's ground game will be out in full force. Bush strategist Karl Rove will unveil his "72-hour plan" to knock on the door of every last uncommitted voter in America leading up to the election. The strategy for the stretch-drive is unambiguous: red meat for the base, inclusiveness and security for the swing voters and making a mockery of Sen. Kerry. To get there, conservative leadership will mobilize their network of grassroots activists like never before, focusing on key battleground states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Missouri.

...The drive to get out the Republican vote will be but one part of a genuine and dangerously effective conservative mass movement that has emerged in recent years. But there's a difference between the right's activism and that of the left. While most progressive movements tend to be organized spontaneously by activists in true bottom-up fashion, the right's grassroots are top-down, disciplined and hierarchical. Many of their ground troops have been professionally inflamed to the point that they've become another powerful media tool for conservative leadership. Beyond a base of dedicated activists within the evangelical community and some other true believers – an estimated 15 million of whom made it to the polls for Bush in 2000 – the right's populism is often a smoke-and-mirrors affair cultivated by GOP operatives, spread with today's easy activist tools and underwritten – sometimes indirectly – by the usual conservative donors.

This approach works. We saw it performed perfectly in Florida in the days after the contested 2000 presidential vote. Pro-Bush protesters marching in the streets of Florida convinced the Miami-Dade canvassing board to shut down its recount before the tally was completed, sending Gore v. Bush to the courts. According to the New York Times, the decision to halt the recount "followed a rapid campaign of public pressure." Republican telephone banks urged voters of all stripes to protest the process and conservative talk-radio hosts echoed the call. According to the Times, one Republican attorney used a bull horn to egg the crowds on, and the gathering protesters became violent, at one point even assaulting a Democratic board member.

(Click here to read the complete article.)

[Well, good.  I hope they waste a lot of time and energy knocking on doors in states that aren't up for grabs - just out of sheer greed.  No one has ever accused the neo-cons of having good judgment.]