Inside the GOP’s Effort to Close the Campaign-Science Gap With Democrats
MASON CITY, IA - DECEMBER 29: Campaign yard signs are stacked and ready for people to take home after an event with former Massachusetts Governor and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney at Music Man Square December 29, 2011 in Mason City, Iowa. Recent state-wide polls put Romney and fellow candidate Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) close going into next week's first-in-the-country Iowa Caucuses, a litmus test for the GOP hopefuls.
Photographer: Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesThis spring, the Cato Institute identified 600 Americans who read more than 20 books per year and made arrangements to send them each one more. The libertarian think tank split these readers into three groups. One group received a free copy of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, one got longtime Cato executive David Boaz’s The Libertarian Mind, and one a book that Cato scholars considered a useful placebo to free-market doctrine: the Bible. After three months, six months, and 12 months, members of all three groups would be surveyed to see if the unsolicited books they had received could explain differential response rates to one question: Do you consider yourself a libertarian?
The Cato researcher behind the project explained to other members of a below-the-radar Republican group known as the Center for Strategic Initiatives, or CSI, that the 600 books were just part of a pilot test. If the design appeared to work properly, the experiment would be replicated on a larger scale: 12,000 books this time. “Political books have never been tested,” says David Kirby, now a vice president and senior fellow at Cato. “Think tanks think that books persuade people. Do they?”