targeting

In thinking about the Palin pick, I was thinking that there is a demographic group out there which has been often overlooked by political strategists, but which she is pretty much a "bulls eye" for.

I've seen women voters categorized as feminists, soccer moms, et al. But much of this description seems frankly, too "pink" for a large segment of today's women voters.

I'm thinking about woman entrepeneurs, woman blue collar tradespeople, female hard rock fans, woman bikers, and sportswomen. Girls who listen to country artists like Gretchen Wilson or Carrie Underwood who certainly don't "stand by their man" in their songs.

For some reason, I've seen a lot of pickups with door signs identifying a woman proprietor, and I'm not sure Wellesley grad Hillary Clinton is really her role model. These folks are post-feminist in that regard and distant from yuppie society.

I think there is a great opportunity for the Republicans to lock in a new demographic group "Winchester Women"---self-reliant rural/exurban women under 50---due to the Sarah Palin pick.  

Think the spouses of last cycle's "Nascar Dads". I suspect that this group had heavy voter falloff from '04 to '06, but has the possibility to exceed the Bush percentage this year if properly motivated.

The Obama camp may have already started on helping us out, as attacks on Palin's experience and zip code are going to come off haughty and elitist to these voters. 

I imagine the RNC has already focus grouped and polled this demographic. If not . they should, since I think reliance on sisterly solidarity with a wronged Senator Clinton might miss the mark for these voters. 

This is instructive. The D-Trip is not afraid to play in primaries:

As the cycle wages on and Republicans appear more vulnerable this November, those extraordinary circumstances have become the norm.

The addition of Iraq veteran Jon Powers to the DCCC’s Red to Blue program last week made the New York House candidate the latest to gain the national party’s fundraising assistance.

Over the previous month, the committee used Red to Blue to back another New York candidate, as well as candidates in open primaries in Alaska, Arizona and Louisiana. It had previously added a candidate in Michigan in March.

Only six races with competitive Democratic primaries are currently listed as “toss-up” or “lean Democratic” by the Cook Political Report. The DCCC has now picked a side in all six of them.

One of the raps against the NRCC in the spring special slaughter is that they refused to support the more electable (or less unelectable) candidates in LA-6 and MS-1. Nobody likes to take a heavy handed approach when you have two or more competitive candidates running. As a former party committee operative, I can tell you that the decision to weigh in for a candidate, or not to weigh in at all, heavily shapes perceptions of the national GOP among grassroots activists, rarely for the better.

But people don't like to get beat either, especially when the defeat was preventable. And you've got to weigh that.