United States: The governing party's strategist believes it can still win by making personal contact with voters, writes Denis Staunton in Florence, Kentucky.
Karl Rove moved through the crowd like a political superstar, shaking hands, grinning and waving as his Secret Service detail kept a watchful eye on anyone who came too close. Never elected to political office and recently stripped of his White House policy role, Rove is nonetheless perceived by Republicans and Democrats alike as the governing party's last, best hope of retaining its majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives next month.
Demonised by Democrats as the evil genius behind George Bush's political success and allegedly dubbed "turd blossom" by the president himself, Rove is credited with building the ruthlessly effective electoral machine that has given Republicans control of the White House and both houses of Congress.
More than 100 activists have turned out on a chilly Saturday morning to hear the pale, bespectacled strategist endorse Representative Geoff Davis, who faces a tough battle to hold his seat against Democrat Ken Lucas, who represented the district for six years until 2004.
Rove's message is simple - Republicans can beat the odds and hold their majorities if activists work hard at implementing the party's "72-hour project", making personal contact with as many potential voters as possible in the final days of the campaign.
"It's why George Bush was elected in 2000. It's why he was re-elected in 2004. It's because people went door to door, spoke to their neighbours and said, please vote for this good man," he said.
Republicans claim that their get-out-the-vote operation is successful because, unlike the Democrats, they do not rely on hired operatives but use local people to encourage neighbours to vote.
"We live in a technological age of focus groups and TV ads, but politics is about people and it's about people talking to people with passion I can't tell you the difference it makes. It's the difference between winning and losing," Rove said.
In fact, the Republicans are not above using hired help during election campaigns and some of those handing out leaflets in Florence on Saturday told me they were paid operatives who were moving on to other states later that day.
Rove told his audience to focus on the Republicans' best issues - the United States' strong economic growth and the fight against terrorism. Claiming that Bush's tax cuts had lifted the US out of recession, he warned that a Democratic-controlled Congress would start raising taxes as soon as possible.
"Their philosophy is perfectly clear - any day is a good day to raise taxes. Any day is a good day to put their hand in your pocket," he said.
He said that a US withdrawal from Iraq would mean handing over one of the world's most oil-rich countries to al-Qaeda, and offered the party faithful some recommended reading.
"If you've got 17 bucks, there's a book I'd like you to read. You can get it at Borders or Barnes & Noble and you should read it and pass it on to your friends. It's called Messages to the World and it's the collected works of Osama bin Laden. It's like reading Mein Kampf in 1932," he said.
As he made his way out of the meeting, shaking more hands and posing for photographs, I asked Rove about another book, Tempting Faith, to be published today by David Kuo, former deputy director of the White House office for faith-based initiatives. In it, Kuo claims that Rove privately described evangelical Christians as "nuts" while embracing them in public and using their votes to win elections.
"I am shocked by that book. That book is simply not true. Evangelical Christians know the reality of their relationship with the White House because they know the president is himself an evangelical Christian," he said.
Rove dismissed fears that Evangelicals, disappointed by the Bush administration's failure to advance their agenda and outraged by scandal surrounding Republican Mark Foley's contacts with teenage boys, will stay at home on November 7th. Then, with a narrow smile and a dangerous gleam in his eye, he added that there was still time for many surprises between now and election day.
"There are still 23 days to go. That's a geological age in American politics," he said.