The buzz this morning is about Democrats crossing over to vote in today’s GOP primary.
Of course, by doing so, those Democrats will automatically change their party registration to the GOP. The sense is that this won’t change much; most of these folks are Democrats, through and through, despite the fact that they chose to cast a ballot in a GOP primary.
Except that the choice becomes public information. So any GOP-leaning group (say, one of the SuperPACs!) could take that information and the mailing addresses and add all of today’s voters to their mailing lists.
So suppose you wanted to dissuade a Michigan Democrat from voting for Obama again… you could point out his opposition to job-creating domestic energy production like the Keystone Pipeline. You could point out how his permitting and leasing policies have slowed domestic oil production in the Gulf of Mexico, even as gas approaches $5 per gallon. You could point out how he eliminated funding for a scholarship program that allowed low-income children attend the same private school his daughter attend. You could point out how his staunchly anti-gun attorney general let guns get into the hands of the Mexican cartels, and who uses that scandal as an excuse to call for more gun control. You could point out how despite the promises, only 5 percent of the stimulus ended up being spent on repairing roads and bridges, billions of dollars were given to tax cheats and millions of dollars were spent in fictitious congressional districts like a $156,000 project in “Michigan’s 83rd Congressional District.”
Today’s crossover voters might end up hearing a lot of messages the Obama campaign doesn’t want them to hear in the coming months.