Southern Appeal - "With a rebel yell, they cried more, more, more!"
I've been tempted to a similar response for candidates who use a less time-consuming (but more rude) tactic: pre-recorded phone calls. I never *did* it, because, like you, I consider my vote too important to cast in spite.
This gives an interesting edge to the old "what would happen if everybody did?" test. Short run: the wrong candidate wins because the right voters changed their votes. Long run: the party stops *doing* those tactics. But I say, vote your conscience and use other means to communicate with the party.
I'm sure there must be some phone number he could call to express his annoyance, and it would certainly be more effective and less dishonest than voting for that irksome woman.
I have to agree with the Professor; I would be pretty irritated if I had to waste 45 minutes so the RNC could prove the same point to me that first-class mail or email could make. If someone from the RNC showed up at my door and said "wait here, something important is going to happen" then came back 45 minutes later, and said "Vote the "R" line! How about some money?" I'd punch him in the face. If some weight-loss company or long-distance phone company did this in the name of "winning" my business, they'd be crazy; why any political party thinks it might be endearing to a busy supporter like the professor is beyond me. I might not vote for the other guy, but I might just stay home.
I'm with Professor Bainbridge. I spend way too much time deleting spam (the filters never catch it all), shredding solicitations from credit card companies, throwing away coupons and closing pop-up windows that seem to evade Google and Netscape.
Registered junk mail is more personally repulsive to me than many of the social issues over which democrats and republicans fight. Few things show more disregard for one's "constituents" than making them jump through hoops to ensure that your message gets to the front of the line. This is the same type of dishonesty that causes advertisers to send out official-looking envelopes with the words "Important Notice" on the outside and no indication of where they're from.
As someone who used to be heavily involved with campaign mail (though not for the RNC), let me just say that Bainbridge is impotent. Mass direct mail is a fundraising tool built on science. Direct marketers (if they're any good) can tell you how many more people will open you letter if it has a window instead of a label on the envelope. They know how many more will read a letter typed in courier as opposed to Arial. They know this because they has sent out thousands of pieces of mail -- half done one way and half done another -- and measured the dollar return. For every political mailing you do there is always a group of recipients, for whatever reason, whom it pisses off. Maybe they belong to another party, maybe you misspelled a word and they are OCD, or maybe they had to wait in line 45 mins at the post office. This is what's known in military parlance as an "acceptable loss." I'm sure they GOP knows that their registered letter trick pisses a number of people off -- but the cash return is favorable enough that they're willing to make the sacrifice.
BTW, has anyone seen one of the GOP's favorite little gimmicks -- every election cycle they send out a letter with a dollar bill attached saying something like "this $1 is worthless, but $100 would really help us save President Bush”? I love getting cash from the RNC -- God knows, they'll never do anything worthwhile with it.
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