Paul Weyrich Quotes
The average voter has to hear a point seven times before it registers.
Weyrich, Paul. "Campaign Finance Reform." Free Congress Foundation, 2002.
While this is generally true, there have been times where one candidate has been so unattractive, corrupt, or unsavory -- or was closely alighted with such an unpopular figure --that the opponent won without a message just concentrating on the negative aspects of the opponent.
Most Americans thought that this issue was settled long ago, but there are still some revanchist conservatives who are fighting the fight of the 18th and 19th century democracies of restricting voting to only the “educated” or “property” classes.
The Democrat campaign operators, led by Robert Woolley, for the first time in an American Presidential campaign, used all the new techniques of public relations and advertising that had been developed. Many observers like the New Republic editors saw this in a negative light for American democracy. They wanted the old method where people met the candidates and had discussions with candidates or heard from others who had. It was in retrospect an editorial of nostalgia, as the country was growing so much that voter “acquaintance” with Presidential candidates was becoming more and more difficult.
Paul Michael Weyrich was an American religious conservative political activist and commentator, most notable as a figurehead of the New Right. He co-founded the conservative think tanks The Heritage Foundation, the Free Congress Foundation, and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). He coined the term "moral majority," the name of the political action group Moral Majority that he co-founded in 1979 with Jerry Falwell.