On the Square Today

In this latest On the Square column, David Mills deciphers a Republican fundraising letter :

The letter, with “Senator Orrin Hatch” written in large capital letters centered across the top, told me that on behalf of the National Republican Senatorial Committee the senator was sending me my “Republican Strategy Ballot” (the name was printed in boldface in the letter). “Your immediate response is critical,” he told me, or rather the “fellow American” to whom the letter was addressed.

The letter followed the standard form for conservative fundraising: four completely filled pages with narrow margins, mixing (with no apparent pattern) flush left with indented paragraphs at a roughly two-to-one ratio, and including (again with no apparent pattern) some phrases and some paragraphs in boldface as well as a few underlined phrases here and there, offering one direct appeal for money on every page, and ending with a p.s. giving one final appeal for money.

Read more . . .

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