Mike Signorile writes that Bush campaign chair and likely incoming RNC head Ken "I'm so straight I simply can't admit it on the record" Mehlman just gave a little talk to GOP governors in which he revealed the campaign looked at consumers' personal habits to determine how they'd vote. (I'd done an article on this topic for the Economist magazine four years ago - you can read it here.) Signorile notes, correctly, that if Mehlman can divine who we are based on our habits, it's fair game for us to do the same to him.
Here's a bit of Signorile's article:
Since he's so confident labeling people based on outward characteristics, Mehlman must understand why his being a 37-year-old "bachelor" who refuses to answer questions about his sexual orientation is a tip-off to many that he's a pathetic closet case, and a pretty vile one at that, having used antigay hatred (aka "moral values") to help elect Bush. Mehlman was actually boasting to the governors about his slick new strategies, telling them that the Bush-Cheney campaign studied voters' consumer habits—basically snooping into voters' personal lives—in targeting them.
"We did what Visa did," Mehlman bragged. "We acquired a lot of consumer data. What magazine do you subscribe to? Do you own a gun? How often do the folks go to church? Where do you send your kids to school? Are you married? Based on that, we were able to develop an exact kind of consumer model that corporate America does every day to predict how people vote—not based on where they live but how they live."
Surely Mehlman can't complain now that people are talking about his marital status and how he lives—right?
