As part of my ongoing fascination with the Bush campaign’s efforts to limit presidential event audiences to loyal sycophants, I enjoyed seeing an article from Maine (brought to my attention by BW) about how the Bush campaign is combining many of their most offensive practices.
We’ve seen, for example, that the campaign will carefully control ticket distribution so the public is not welcome. We’ve also seen campaign officials demand to know if someone is a Bush supporter before they can be given a free ticket. BC04 has even experimented with trading free tickets for volunteer time for the local GOP. Now, however, it appears that Bush’s campaign is putting all of these elements together for a rally in Bangor, Maine, tomorrow.
People who want tickets will be asked by a campaign volunteer if they are supporters or undecided, and if they would like to volunteer to work on the campaign. Each person will then be asked to fill out a form, providing name, address, Social Security number and date of birth. That information will be given to the Secret Service “for security reasons,” [Peter Cianchette, the Bush campaign’s Maine manager] said.
[…]
If any non-supporter gets into the event and stages a protest, that person will be escorted out of the building, Cianchette said.
What a shocker.