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Page 4 of 4 AMY GOODMAN: Did she change her vote? TOM HAMBURGER: She did not, actually. What she told us was that she went to some Bush events. She met Republicans and for the first time felt at home. But when she got into the voting booth, she could not bring herself to cast her ballot for George Bush and voted for John Kerry. But when we talked to Republicans -- and this is an example of this sort of long-term thinking that we think Republicans have developed that Dems have not yet to the same degree -- this was a victory, because she didn't vote for George W. Bush or for Republicans in 2004, but in 2006 or 2008, who knows? We now have an avenue of communication. And this was considered a victory.  AMY GOODMAN: Peter? PETER WALLSTEN: I was going to say that the Voter Vault also has helped them find -- going back to the point of the ethnic politics, in 2004, the Bush campaign managed to track down millions of Hispanic voters that they viewed as potentially sympathetic and who might vote Republican, especially in the Southwest, which was such an important -- which continues to be such an important battleground. And what they did with these people that they found is they sent a DVD, a five-minute-long DVD narrated by President Bush, which was remarkable if you viewed it, especially in the current climate of the immigration debate, because in this DVD, it opens with President Bush on his vacation property in Texas fishing. And he's talking about how all this land used to be Mexico, and the people who lived here weren't foreigners, they weren’t necessarily Hispanics, they were Mexicans. So some congressmen like Tom Tancredo first of all might find it interesting that the President of the United States is somewhat ceding Texas to Mexico. But on top of that, the DVD goes on to have the President bragging about all of the Hispanics he's appointed to high office, how he hopes more Hispanics will run for office and how they’ll be Republicans. And kind of amazingly, the DVD ends with an image of then-Governor Bush marching in a Mexican Independence Day parade in Texas, waving a Mexican flag, which is interesting because many of the conservative Republicans now are critical of some of the protesters who have shown up at these immigration protests waving Mexican flags. Also, there was an interesting event in Cleveland on the weekend before the election in 2004, where the Republicans managed to find creative ways to build a database of potentially sympathetic Jewish voters. And these happened to be Russian-speaking immigrants, Jewish immigrants, who lived in big, tall apartment buildings out in a suburb of Cleveland. And they put together lists. They contacted the local rabbis, and they put out an order for everybody to vote. And then, on the Sunday before Election Day, the Bush campaign actually held a rally that they put on entirely in Russian, that by the end of the rally had all the elderly Russian immigrants standing up, waving their arms, chanting “Bush! Bush! Bush!” in their thick Russian accents. And they all went out and voted in mass for Bush. And, you know, this sounds like a very small group of people, and it is, but in a close election, as everybody has learned, every vote matters. AMY GOODMAN: Peter Wallsten, I want to end by asking you about that exchange that you had with President Bush back in June. You were wearing sunglasses during a news conference. The President on the White House lawn. Let's watch and listen. PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Peter, are you going to ask that question with those shades on? PETER WALLSTEN: I can take them off for you. PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: No, I’m interested in the shade look, seriously. PETER WALLSTEN: Alright, I’ll keep it then. PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: For the viewers, there's no sun. PETER WALLSTEN: I guess it depends on your perspective. PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Touche. AMY GOODMAN: This became a very big story, you and your shades. Why? PETER WALLSTEN: Well, the President, of course, had no idea at the time that I have a retinal condition, a form of macular degeneration called Stargardt’s, so I have -- most of my central vision is gone. But in that context, what was important was that it was outside in the rose garden, it was an overcast day. But even on an overcast day, the glare can be hard to take, especially sitting outside for an extended period of time. That press conference was over an hour long. So it's pretty painful to sit outside with that much glare without sunglasses. And I frankly forget I had them on. It's just natural for me to have them on outside, and I forgot about them, until he mentioned it when he called on me and asked me, of course, as you just saw, if I was going to keep them on. I offered to take them off, and it became funny. But he had made fun of several reporters that day, and he did not know about my condition. So it didn't strike me as that big of a deal at the time. I got back to the office a little while later and noticed that the blogs were beginning to go crazy and then cable. There was, I guess, very little news out of the press conference itself, so cable TV kept playing it over and over again. And the Daily Show made fun of it. Anyway, he -- and when it started becoming a big deal, he actually called me on my cell phone and apologized. And as I told him, I didn't think personally an apology was necessary. It just didn't -- I’m used to this. It's natural for me. I wasn't offended, and it just didn't seem like it should have been a big deal. AMY GOODMAN: Well, we'll leave it at that. One Party Country is Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten's book, The Republican Plan for Dominance in the 21st Century. Thanks very much for joining us. Recommend this article...
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