Blackwell hits the phones.

Ohio GOP State Auditor hopeful Dave Yost was able to utilize the big gun in his arsenel over the weekend - Ken Blackwell.

Now, no one is saying Blackwell will be Yost's ideal advocate in the general election, but it's hard to get a bigger personality to get the vote out among the dedicated Republican voters that come out in each and every primary.

And that's how he's being utilized in the below robo-call from the ORP.



Now, I've heard a lot of folks saying the Seth Morgan/Dave Yost GOP primary will determine once and for all just how powerful the Tea Party movement is as an election driver. I'm not entirely convinced. If Yost was some moderate squish, then perhaps those folks would have a point. But Yost is very clearly a conservative - so much so that even Blackwell has endorsed him. And one thing is clear, Blackwell did not have to step into this mess of a primary.

So now we have conservative versus conservative in a battle where neither side has a substantive amount of cash to communicate their message to a mass audience via paid television advertisements. Both sides have their troops working their tails off to get the vote out. And both sides are passionate.

While primary voters are more engaged than most voters, they still haven't been paying close attention to this race. Consider the Senate Democratic primary as a comparison. That race has two candidates that have already ran and won statewide....and just a few weeks ago their name ID was below 40%.

Now think how low that number must be for Morgan and Yost.

So both sides in the Morgan/Yost battle will work their butts off. But at the end of the day, many conservative voters won't have a clear choice. There isn't one obvious liberal Republican that everyone knows to kick to the curb.

But what this battle is gaining for all the Tea Partiers new to campaigning is experience. They have learned about door-to-door, GOTV phone calls, organizing volunteers, etc. etc. And that will pay off down the line.

If we've learned anything the past year and a half it's that elections really do matter. The longer Ohio continues to be run by liberal Democrats that refuse to confront the oncoming fiscal disaster, the worse off we all are.

Let's all work together to send them a message in November.