A lot of the good and the bad about how Bachmann has been behaving can probably be attributed to her campaign manager, Ed Rollins, who was Reagan's campaign manager; but who has since turned into a despicable, sinister old hack. He is not a person she can trust.
The first week on the job, he started publically bashing Sarah Palin, and has encouraged campaign staff to bash Palin behind the scenes.
Rollins would, of course, want to present Bachmann the same way he presented Ronald Reagan. In the meantime, she has lost her spontaneity and most of her spunk. She is now too calculating and robotic. Her image is too fake and controlled.
Michele Bachmann would be wise to dump Ed Rollins. If she ever wants Sarah Palin's endorsement, she should do it sooner rather than later.
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So ... you’re upset that Rollins is “bashing” Palin, yet you in turn bash Bachman?
When will Sarah run, or will she even run?
Michele’s rise to the top of the polls, or to whereever she is now, coincides with her hiring of Rollins. 3 months ago, she was under 5%. I don’t know enough about Rollins to criticize him, but he has taken her up in the polls. Everything that has taken her down hasn’t been Rollins doing.
Rollins is providing excellent debate prep. She won that exchange with Pawlenty, really hammering home the “Pawlenty made us choose between low tax and pro life” message, she was able to say that twice, and Pawlenty inflicted it upon himself.
She was able to mention what Pawlenty did - low tax vs pro life - an anecdotal - and Pawlenty was shown to be in the wrong vs Bachmann. She could not have explained the story if she had brought it up herself, but Pawlenty gave her such an opportunity to really get Pawlenty with that.
There are a whole lot of things about Bachmann that are pretty questionable, pretty “not presidential”, Rollins had nothing to do with Bachmann resume, except to highlight it, perhaps, which he really shouldn’t do, except maybe to manage it, manage the story.
I have a lot of trouble attacking someone who ran Reagan 84. Since then, we’ve had worse performances by everyone else.
Rollins knows how to win 49 states. Karl Rove won by one close state each time.
Rollins picking Bachmann is good on Bachmann. If he thought it was a pointless waste of time, he wouldn’t have gotten on board.
I would argue that the Bachmann campaign is doing a great job.
If the Sarah Palin campaign is run by Ed Rollins by the end of the year, I wouldn’t be surprised. If Palin gets in, the stress, rigors of campaigning, the more complete picture of Bachmann that emerges, SNL, and Bachmann will be dropping out and throwing her enthusiastic support behind Palin. Palin will get her organization, because this has been the plan from the beginning. I don’t know that for a fact or anything, but, if it was the case, it wouldn’t surprise me at all.
I vaguely remember an article back in around February that I believe had Bachmann describing this very scenario. I vaguely remember seeing something like Bachmann saying that she’d build the organization, and when Palin gets in, she’d take the organization. Make things good for Sarah in Iowa.
Well, if that was the plan, Bachmann did a great job. Handoff from Bachmann to Palin about a month.