All-volunteer army

Get Out the Vote recruiters can make a difference | Hugh Hewitt

Stops along the campaign trail in Minnesota, Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Ohio showed me that an underdog GOP is not quitting and leaving the field as some wishful thinkers inside the Democratic establishment hoped. Instead, Republicans are revving up the fierce "GOTV" machine that debuted in 2002 and that delivered the presidential election in 2004 to George Bush with a turnout that continues to astonish students of American politics.

"GOTV" means "get out the vote" and the effort is hardly new to this century, but has in fact been a staple of American politics since the Republic's founding. In the aftermath of the Florida landslide in 2000, top Bush political advisors Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman set to work to revamp and reimagine GOTV: They succeeded far beyond even the grasp of most political junkies. Using demographic and marketing data familiar to America's vast network of consumer products companies, the GOP braintrust designed and built an information- and technology-driven GOTV effort that laps the Democratic effort.