Posted on 03/07/2014 9:38:15 AM PST by GIdget2004
Their frustration had been mounting for weeks. But by late January national Republicans had had it with David Jolly, their candidate in Tuesday’s nationally watched Florida congressional special election.
The candidate had just told the state’s top political reporter that he disagreed with an ad the party was airing against his Democratic opponent — a spot paid for with the nearly $500,000 the GOP had already spent on Jolly’s behalf.
“Are you f—-ing kidding me?” a senior National Republican Congressional Committee official told a Jolly staffer over the phone, according to two sources familiar with the conversation. Would the Jolly campaign prefer that the NRCC stop spending money in the race altogether? the official asked.
Over the past week, a half-dozen Washington Republicans have described Jolly’s campaign against Democrat Alex Sink as a Keystone Cops operation, marked by inept fundraising, top advisers stationed hundreds of miles away from the district in the state capital and the poor optics of a just-divorced, 41-year-old candidate accompanied on the campaign trail by a girlfriend 14 years his junior. The sources would speak only on condition of anonymity.
Publicly, both sides declined to discuss the dispute. In a brief interview here this week, Jolly shrugged off questions about how he’s conducted his campaign. Andrea Bozek, an NRCC spokeswoman said, “We don’t discuss internal conversations we have with campaigns,” but added that “local and national Republicans have been working around the clock to elect David Jolly on Tuesday.”
Heightening the GOP’s anxiety is the national focus on the race — a battle for control of one of the nation’s few true tossup congressional districts, the outcome of which will inevitably be seen as a measure of the political environment heading into the November midterm.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
So why is the GOP leaking this crap to the MSM? They are helping to torpedo their own candidate.
I’ve had to endure both of these candidates marketing and it is driving people mad. Too much usage of insider terminology in the ads.
I expect Jolly to lose.
Let me guess, Jolly is a Tea Party Republican?
“....and the poor optics of a just-divorced, 41-year-old candidate accompanied on the campaign trail by a girlfriend 14 years his junior.....”
Sounds like a Democrat!!!
I wonder what the real beef is at the NRCC.
They do THAT all the time. If he were a Demonrat, the party would hang in with him if he was getting hummers on stage at campaign rallies and... oh wait...that was klintoon.
So do I.
Hey now, leave the social issues out of these races.
Well that’s just odd. I’d get it if he was a Tea Party candidate.
“So why is the GOP leaking this crap to the MSM? They are helping to torpedo their own candidate.”
Probably because they assume he is going to lose, and they want to make it about a bad candidate rather than a forecast of what to expect in 2014 elections.
Why can’t a divorced 41-year old sleep with a 27-year old woman? I thought we were prudes because we “harp” on Bill Clinton getting little willie serviced in the Oral Orifice!
The GOP is KILLING him with this. Either internal polls show him losing big, or they are truly evil.
Good point. Though regardless of who wins, as I always say, special elections are a referendum on absolutely nothing.
Sounds to me like buyers remorse. Even the GOPe cannot stand their candidates.
Circular Firing Squad forming on the right....
Good point.
No Tea Party would back a candidate such as this Jolly, what a jerk.
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