Bush builds grass-roots machine

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MIAMI -- President Bush's re-election campaign, taking advantage of the protracted Democratic primary process, is assembling a massive grass-roots political machine months earlier than usual.

"If you think knocking on doors, getting absentee ballots done, registering voters, making phone calls doesn't make a difference," Florida Gov. Jeb Bush told volunteers Saturday, "then you must have been asleep with Rip van Winkle in the year 2000."

He was referring to the Republicans' near-death experience in the Florida recount wars, which led to some serious soul-searching about the party's "ground game."

"The Democrats had been better organized, principally because of the AFL-CIO," Mr. Bush said in an interview with The Washington Times. "The unions are really good at identifying voters and getting them to the polls."

Having ceded this sort of grass-roots politicking to Democrats for years, Republicans resolved to radically ramp up their own get-out-the-vote efforts. After testing various techniques in the off-year elections of 2001, Republicans put them to full use the next year and scored historic victories in the midterm elections.

"The Republicans learned a lesson," Mr. Bush said.

Even former President Bill Clinton -- whose party took a shellacking in the midterms of 1994 -- conceded that for the first time in several elections, Republicans did a better job than Democrats of turning out the vote in 2002.

"We were really derelict in not being tougher in the last six, eight weeks of the election cycle," Mr. Clinton told American Prospect magazine.