Redstate

By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Republicans — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

As is his wont, Michael Barone notes the significance of an item few have bothered to comment on:

Amid the cabinet reshuffling, little attention has been paid to the appointment of Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman as Republican National Committee chairman. But Mehlman's appointment could turn out to be as significant for our politics as Condoleezza Rice's is likely to be for foreign policy. If Karl Rove was the architect of George W. Bush's thumping re-election victory, Mehlman was the structural engineer who turned the plans into reality. Mehlman's great achievement was to create a largely volunteer organization of 1.4 million people who turned out the vote in counties big and small for Bush. He managed this task the way Rudolph Giuliani managed the New York City Police Department: by requiring metrics--numerical goals, validated by independent parties--to measure the work being done every week. This enabled the Bush organization to plug holes and to provide psychic rewards for those doing good work. No one (including Giuliani himself) thought Giuliani could cut crime in half in New York City; very few thought that Mehlman could produce 10 million new votes for Bush. But Giuliani did it, and so did Mehlman.

The surge in turnout was unusual for what was, after all, a rerun election. Turnout was up only microscopically in 1956 when Dwight Eisenhower faced Adlai Stevenson a second time. Turnout was down in 1996 when Bill Clinton faced Ross Perot and a decorated World War II veteran a second time. Many people figured they had made the decision already and didn't need to go to the polls again. Not so in 2004 when Bush faced a second liberal Democrat who had spent much of his career in the Senate. With the absentee votes in California and Washington finally counted, it appears that overall turnout was up 12 percent. John Kerry's popular vote was also 12 percent above Al Gore's. But the popular vote for Bush was up a stunning 20 percent. Before the election, some liberal commentators were claiming that Bush would win no votes he hadn't won in 2000. Not quite: He won 10 million more.

I imagine that Mehlman's method of identifying new voters will quickly be adopted by Democrats as they seek to increase their own turnout in advance of the 2006 midterm elections. It is the ultimate compliment to Mehlman, the political engineer, that his methods would be imitated, and from what I have seen, Mehlman will likely go on to innovate some more instead of resting on his 2004 laurels.