Battling For Hearts And Minds
As the Florida recount dispute rolls on in the courts, Republicans and Democrats continue revving up their public relations machines. But while Al Gore and Democratic leaders have mainly been using the television airwaves to get their message out, the Republicans may have the upper hand in mobilizing their grassroots supporters to demand that Gore concede.
Republican National Committee Chairman Jim Nicholson recently sent out an e-mail to supporters, responding to an appeal to electors by Democratic strategist Bob Beckel not to vote for George W. Bush.
Nicholson asked Republicans to be vocal about Beckel's appeal: "Call, e-mail and write your local elected officials, Democrats and Republicans ... Call your local talk radio show or TV news show."
The GOP chair then requests Republicans to "send this e-mail on to your own e-mail list - to all of your friends and neighbors who are interested in knowing the truth about what is going on in Florida."
Another e-mail penned by Nicholson, titled "Truth Versus Gore," gives Bush-backers quotes and figures to back their argument that Gore should give up. Nicholson encourages supporters to "forward ... the e-mail ... to family, friends and associates. It is time for truth to prevail and for Gore to concede."
Gore, however, feels that public opinion has been rendered all but moot in this situation.
"I'm quite sure that the polls don't matter in this, because it's a legal question," he said last week. And although the vice president and Democratic leaders are acting confident, some lawmakers are trying to urge Gore to make more of an effort to appeal to the public.
"I've told his team he ought to be doing a better job on the P.R. side ... and ask the country to be patient," said Rep. Allen Boyd, D-Fla.
Meanwhile, the RNC and grassroots conservative groups are seizing the public relations initiative.
Conservative Web sites such as NewsMax.com and FreeRepublic.com are a virtual breeding ground for anti-Gore propaganda. In fact, the "Sore-Loserman" signs and T-shirts that frequently show up on TV coverage from Florida are the work of FreeRepublic.com users, or "Freepers."
The Freepers have also mastered the art of skewing the results of online political polls, by alerting fellow users to the latest polls and flooding them with pro-Bush votes - a process they've dubbed "Freeping."
For instance, a Freeper discovered an electronic poll conducted by CBS affiliate WTVF-TV in Nashville that asked: "Should Vice President Al Gore concede the election." A Freeper then posted a message on the FreeRepublic.com bulletin board Thursday with the poll's results at 50.75% "Yes" to 49.25% "No." The message stated: "Looks like it needs to be Freep'ed badly."
The New York Daily News discovered last Wednesday what i's like to be "Freeped" when it learned that close to 3,700 Freepers, out of 10,116 total respondents, voted in its poll on whether Gore should concede. The newspaper figured that the Freepers boosted the "Yes" vote from 70 percent to 83 percent.
Free Republic Institute president Brian L. Buckley feels there's nothing wrong with the Freepers' poll-stuffing.
"There is a general consensus that the media's adoration of polls affects its coverage, in turn affecting the public's leanings. If the media ... can be sidetracked, this is a good thing," Buckley told CBSNews.com.
Prior to the glut of "Sore-Loserman" signs, placards for NewsMax.com were often visible on TV news live shots. The day after the election, NewsMax.com had armed Bush supporters with signs bearing the site's name.
The site, a clearinghouse for pro-conservative news stories and editorials, wants to "expose the outrageous actions by the media to cover up for Gore and the Democratic Party." And NewsMax is branching out from the Web as well, placing ads in USA Today and The New York Times.
So, is the GOP's nonstop hammering succeeding? The Republicans seem to think so. Bush campaign spokesman Ray Sullivan believes that "public opinion has built strongly against Vice President Gore" in recent days.
The Democrats, on the other hand, aren't convinced.
Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Jenny Backus thinks the Republican efforts to rally conservatives against Gore are "backfiring on them," saying it shows the Bush camp is "closely aligned with the extreme ends of the party." And, at the end of the day, Backus believes their actions will have turned off "moderate Republicans and people who value the law and order aspects of democracy."