Yes. Brazille’s a doosey.
Perry’s campaign “guru” Dave Carney.
................“A lot of his skill has to do with his being able to take a wealth of information and break it down into simple terms, whether it’s polling data, history, resources, whatever,” Wilbanks said. “He helps his candidate speak the language that the American people understand.”
The New Englander came back to Texas in 1997, when Austin-based GOP consultant Rove dropped his other clients, including a relatively obscure state agriculture commissioner named Perry, to concentrate on Gov. George W. Bush’s 1998 re-election effort and subsequent presidential campaign. Carney picked up Perry, and the two have been together ever since.
Carney and Rove found themselves at odds a year later, when Bush was breezing toward re-election, and Perry was in a tough lieutenant governor’s race with Democrat John Sharp, the state comptroller.
Carney insisted Perry go negative, despite Rove’s insistence that negative campaigning would depress voter turnout and undercut the Bush portrait he was crafting of a “compassionate conservative.”
Carney got his way and Perry won, barely, but the Carney-Rove working relationship didn’t. The estrangement has only gotten worse. Carney never endorsed Bush during the 2000 GOP primary and 10 years later dismissed Hutchison and her Bush-family supporters as “country-club Republicans.”
In the early days of Perry’s presidential campaign, Rove has been one of the governor’s most outspoken critics.
Years ago, former White House chief of staff Andrew Card good-naturedly described Carney as “temperamental and a bit nuts,” but those who know both Carney and Rove say Carney is more secure with himself than Rove.
Reporters find Carney terse and to the point, although he can flash a self-deprecating sense of humor and doesn’t seem to hold a grudge...........