The Command Post - 2004 US Presidential Election - Bush Campaign Manager Warns GOP to Expect Drop in Bush Polls

July 26, 2003

Bush Campaign Manager Warns GOP to Expect Drop in Bush Polls

It's called "Expectancy Theory," it's well researched in the social sciences, and you can see it at work in this Newsday story about Ken Mehlman and Bush polling data. In it, he says:

"These numbers will come down. We must prepare for an election every bit as close as the 2000 election."

As campaign manager, Mehlman understands its the size of the disparity between expectations and experience that's important. Strategically lower expectations now, and nobody can claim the terrible favorability ratings you're getting in Feb. 2004 are a surprise. In fact, you can say �We told you so.� And if the favorability ratings stay high, well, then no one says anything.

It will be interesting to see how aggressive the Bush camp becomes in trying to actively manage expectations downward between now and 2004 ...

Posted by Alan at July 26, 2003 09:00 AM | TrackBack

Comments

We now temporarily take control of your weblog to urge people to get involved in this civil disobedience.

How to force congress to pass a prescription drug benefit under Medicare Part B

Now you have the opportunity to repeal HR 1/ S 1 the Republican prescription drug plan and replace it with a prescription drug benefit under Medicare Part B

Call Eckerd Pharmacy Corporate Headquarters at 1-800-325-3737 and tell them unless they can get the congress to pass
a prescription drug benefit under Medicare part B covering 80 percent of medication with no extra premium, no extra deductibles, no means test, no coverage gaps, you will not buy from them and you will tell your friends also not to buy from them.

Call CVS Pharmacy Corporate headquarters at 888 607-4287
and tell them unless they can get the congress to pass a prescription drug benefit under Medicare part B covering 80 percent of medication with no extra premium, no extra deductibles, no means test, no coverage gaps, you will not buy from them and you will tell your friends also not to buy from them.

Call Walgreens Pharmacy Corporate headquarters at 888 289 2273 and tell them unless they can get the congress to pass a prescription drug benefit under Medicare part B covering 80 percent of medication with no extra premium, no extra deductibles, no means test, no coverage gaps, you will not buy from them and you will tell your friends also not to buy from them.

Also read and sign the petition at
http://www.boycott-republicans.com

which covers a comprehensive progressive agenda.

How to stop the Republican initiated governor recall.

Hello

Several Republicans will run for Governor of California in a recall election. They have every right to run for governor.

Because the Republicans have decided to do this recall action I have a right to decide not to buy a car alarm called the Viper from Directed Electronics, a company that one of the candidates Darrell Issa works for.

I have a right to tell others not to buy products from Directed Electronics for this reason and call them at 1 800 876 0800 and demand that they get every Republican candidate to withdraw or they will lose alot of sales. So if you want to stop the Republicans from running, call Directed electronics and call car alarm dealers that sell the Viper and let the civil disobedience begin.

Also read and sign the petition at
http://www.boycott-republicans.com

which covers a comprehensive progressive agenda.

Posted by: stolenelectioncoin.com at July 26, 2003 04:55 PM

So, you’re broadcasting your bullshit on this thread too, huh?

I live in San Francisco, a**h***!
I am a witness, therefore, to the failure of liberal control over ANYTHING.
There are a whole lot of us here in Cal who are thoroughly disgusted with the inept socialist management of the state, and this recall should tell you that.
We are tired of watching you people drag this state deeper and deeper into the pile of hedgehog maneur that seems to be your ultimate goal for California, of having you destroy the state while telling us how competent and “good for us” you are while the Republicans, who actually CAN manage California, are evil, etc.
We can’t kick Davis out of there fast enough.

Posted by: Seth at July 26, 2003 05:26 PM

Stolenelection and all the other bitter twits out there:

When did free prescription drugs become a right? If it’s a question of whether people can or can’t live without something, then why aren’t we providing free food, shelter and clothing to every American while we’re at it? Eighty percent of every prescription WITHOUT A MEANS TEST? So we get to pay for Warren Buffet’s Viagra?

Get a copy of the Constituion and read it, memorize it. You’re in the wrong country. We said you were free to pursue happiness, we didn’t promise you’d catch it. And we’re not going to snare it and bring it to you either, socialist scumbag.

Posted by: torpedo_eight at July 26, 2003 08:57 PM

Actually, it will be a “RETURN TO NORMAL” approach that gets the next occupant into the White House.

It should be interesting, too, to see what happens with the current drug law, since the drug companies overcharge in America. Nothing wrong with the drugs that come from out of the country.

But, think of it this way, once we’re buying drugs from out of the country, how soon will it take Columbia to come on line? If you get enough packages flowing into the system, it will get mighty interesting up ahead.

Most medicines are just pissed away, anyway.

Posted by: Carol Herman at July 27, 2003 01:37 AM

Although I enjoy reading the Command Post, I’ve never felt knowledgable enough to respond to a thread. I’m a doctor who has also done some work for drug companies. I think the GOP is right to keep this drug package small, even risking the wrath of the AARP.

I disagree with covering prescription drugs except for the very poor (but then, they have Medicaid) for many of the reasons Seth mentioned. You can kiss your new, livesaving drugs good-bye if Medicare starts being a big player. They will be SO big that they will dictate what the companies will be paid for the product. They already do this to doctors, with disastrous results as we pass the subsidized care on to everybody else, or refuse Medicare patients altogether. So taxpayers pay twice- in higher taxes and in higher drug costs- at least until the private insurers refuse to pay, as well. They’re already doing this with limited success by refusing to pay for expensive drugs (even if they work better or are safer than the cheap ones).

If evil drug companies cannot make a profit, there will be less R & D and fewer new drugs, especially for rare or less-glamorous diseases. For every 100 new compounds, only one will make it to market. The regulations we have here are unbelievable. But they’re good. Want to start touting foreign medications? Let’s talk thalidomide. We don’t have many flippered citizens here because of the FDA. How about the eleven people killed in Brazil this summer because they decided to make their own IV contrast material instead of buying from us?

It does irritate me that a huge amount of money is spent in advertising, especially direct-to-patient advertising. There, the companies are guilty as charged.

As for the cost of medicine here, keep in mind it’s mostly American companies doing R & D in America. Name a great Canadian or Mexican drug company- there aren’t many. Canada has a socialist, bare bones healthcare system and people won’t pay for drugs because they don’t pay for anything. In Mexico they can’t afford it. So the big companies would be foolish to try to sell drugs over what the market will bear.

Of course they stick it to us. It’s the American way. I just can’t think of a better way, unfortunately.

Posted by: Dani at July 27, 2003 08:48 AM

Dani - What is needed here is not so much a knowledge of the medical profession (of which you have provided interesting and salient points) as an understanding of markets. Boneheads like Carol and Dennis Kucinich believe that a person’s health - and the service provided to them - are somehow beyond the reach of market forces. In their world, health services are ESSENTIAL, therefore, they should be FREE.

Like physics, the market really doesn’t care that people are ignorant of the rules, it comes crushing down on them from above. Like it or not, medical services are a good, and the goods must be treated as such by all participants. It is not an unencumbered right like life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness. For people to enjoy FREE health services, either in the hospital, or through prescription drug legislation, someone else to work for NOTHING. It requires the very manufacturers who would save lives to give up making any money in the medical field, it requires doctors and nurses to work for nothing.

Now I’d doubt seriously Carol works for free, but she doesn’t understand the system, so she thinks she can supend it when it’s convenient. Wrong. A quality health system is no different than a house, a Mercedes, a brick wall or a fire hydrant, those who can afford the service receive it, those who can afford better go for that service.

Anyone who thinks all services can be free has any number of recent socialist nightmares to sample, if they bother: Canadian healthcare, the Soviet Union, North Korea, Cuba. All systems based on the belief that the market could be supplanted by fiat, that something could be free if we simply say it is.

Plain and simple: I have no right to medical care, I have no right to demand that others purchase my prescription drugs for me. And our Constitution says nothing about medicine, so our government has nothing upon which to base any support for such schemes, all of which are illegal AND unconstituional.

Medicare and Medicade are on their way to collapse because you can only suspend market forces for so long. Presciption drugs should be the nail in Medicare’s coffin. Politicians are not economists, they are politicians. They can promise people anything, and there are those stupid enough to believe it can all happen. But reality wins every time.

Carol: “Most medicines are just pissed away, anyway.” If that’s true, I recommend you recycle.

Posted by: torpedo_eight at July 27, 2003 11:34 AM

To add to both preceeding comments, while that 1 in a hundred drugs gets through FDA scrutiny, those other 99 that don’t still cost the pharmaceutical companies millions of dollars in R & D costs, which they mostly have to eat.
If they don’t recoup R & D expenses for the drugs they don’t get into the marketplace, AND make a profit via the drugs that do, there is really no sense in their even bothering, is there, Carol?
Contrary to what many liberal socialists in this country seem to believe, doctors, chemists, researchers, pharmacists, etc don’t bust their asses in college and obligate themselves to college loan repayments for the next several years so they can live in poverty the rest of their lives, and the businessmen who invest in pharmaceutical companies don’t put their hard earned wealth and years of effort on the line for purely charitable reasons, nor to cater to a lot of Utopian dreamers and the slick liberal politicians that con them.
If the industry wasn’t profitable, the sharp, knowledgeable minds that drive it would go elsewhere, and millions of people would suffer or die as a result.
Why don’t you ask a few of your favorite democrat politicians, you know, the ones who use Medicaid and related venues as campaign weapons, how many of THEM depend on Medicaid? I’m sure you’ll find that most, if not all of them, have expensive physicians that cater mostly to the “moneyed” set.

Posted by: Seth at July 27, 2003 08:02 PM

Hrm. Ok Curiosity killed the cat. Is it just me or is this ‘Civil Disobediance’ carp strictly for the Left? I don’t recall any large conservative movement to commit ‘civil disobediance.’ When we had our Pro-War rallies we certainly didn’t commit civil disobediance.

Certainly, if I wanted too I could have gotten a friend of mine to dress up like Saddam Hussein while I gunned him down with a TOY GUN in the middle of the busiest street in Michigan. For the sake of civil disobediance. I chose not to do it though because well? Civil disobediance never works:-)

Boycotting? That rarely works either. Calling various companies to complain and moan and bicker certainly doesn’t do anything but relieve your stress. Ah well.. May the Liberals be with us for comical purposes only.

Posted by: Jeff MacMillan at July 27, 2003 08:44 PM

Jeff MacMillan:

AMEN!

:-)

Posted by: Seth at July 27, 2003 11:46 PM

Boycotting.

When I was in Vegas back in the mid/ late 1980s, there was a strike of union employees at the Frontier.
Bunches of striking employees carrying signs in the broiling desert heat.
With a shrug, management simply hired new people to replace them and went on, business as usual, the rooms remaining at high occupancy, the casino packed. Apparently they were still at it in the early 1990s, and for the resort, it was business as usual.

Posted by: Seth at July 28, 2003 12:45 AM

torpedo_eight said, “You’re in the wrong country. We said you were free to pursue happiness, we didn’t promise you’d catch it. And we’re not going to snare it and bring it to you either, socialist scumbag.” AND…
“Carol: “Most medicines are just pissed away, anyway.” If that’s true, I recommend you recycle. “

T-8…..You’re killin’ me.. :)

Posted by: Jeff B at July 29, 2003 10:31 AM

Doctors and Pharmaceuticals Unite!
You guys are, like, killin’ me here with these prescription meds… WTF? I’ve got one foot on the freakin’ deck(Prozac), the other in the life boat(Valium). I could REALLY use some Dramamine. Is that covered? Curious.

Posted by: Cap'n SPIN at July 29, 2003 10:56 AM

WHO DO I CALL?

The Ship’s Doctor is currently pukin’. My hope is, he’ll find it in his heart (yuppers, the ungreedy one), to cut back on the $$$ margin. I know, I know. Capitalism. Insurance is payin’ for a lot of this stuff, and Everybody has their hand out. Reasonable profit is one thing. Greed is a totally different bag. Boycott, Shmoycott. Get a grip!

Posted by: Cap'n SPIN at July 29, 2003 11:01 AM

Test

Posted by: Kenneth Bennett at October 26, 2003 10:57 PM

Tes testingt

Posted by: Kenneth Bennett at October 26, 2003 10:59 PM

Tes testingt

Posted by: Kenneth Bennett at October 26, 2003 10:59 PM

Dear Sirs :
I can’twnderstand just our leaders are doing in Washington. As bad as the economy is here in our country. Jobs are going out of our country to help the needy. for heaven sake what about out needythat are getting plastered with high drug cost
We have had a grocery store here in south Georgia for sixty two years. I know the needy.I’ve seen people when things were cheaper at our market come and shake there heads when they saw stake for eighty nine cents a pound. The people in Washing need to see these people and they will undestand what need weally is. There is not one thing what so ever wrong with haveing money.
but when wealthy folks are around wealthy folks every day.It then is hard to really under stand the needy. They need cheaper drugs. I went to the dentist a few days ago and it cost me here seventy five dollars to just get them cleaned, prices are going higher every day. How can people on a budget pay these prices. There is so much pressure on people these days. Something needs to be done about prices higher and higher each year or so. these people need help. I know how they feel and hurt I see them avery day. This is probably not any thing new to you people. But just stok and take a long look and then you wwill then see where I an coming from
Thanks
Ken Bennett
e-mail me I would love to hear from you.

Posted by: Kenneth Bennett at October 26, 2003 11:24 PM

Posted by: Kenneth Bennett at October 26, 2003 11:25 PM