Rallying the troops

The NY Times magazine reports that the Republicans will be using multi-level marketing style tactics as part of Bush's re-election campaign:

"The notion of translating the MLM concept into politics is visionary -- and also a little disquieting. Pyramid-based companies have proved amazingly successful at raising up armies of enterprising Americans; Amway, the world's most successful MLM, has more than 3.6 million distributors. But some MLM's thrive by imposing their own strange and insular cultures on their recruits, and while they offer the illusion of self-employment, those at the top of the pyramid often demand a rigid kind of uniformity and loyalty.

'It's love and belief in the importance of the president,' Mehlman told me earnestly. ''You can't, in politics and in almost anything you do, force people to do anything. You have to persuade them. They have to want to do it. That's why we do it this way. You're not following my orders. It's our orders. It's our effort. [emphasis their's]'"

I wonder what would happen if they learned there wasn't a spaceship behind that comet...