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.
That’s an interesting theory, and would give Palin the organization she appears to lack. However, that’s contrary to the story other Palin freepers tell us about how mean Bachmann is to Palin and how they haven’t talked in 16 months and that Bachmann lied when she said she and Palin were “Friends”.
Also, remember that Bachmann was Romney’s trojan horse (or was it stalking horse?) If Palin had a plan to pick up Bachmanns strong base of support, wouldn’t it be better if Palin supporters weren’t tearing down Bachmann so much?
And I would think Palin would send a couple of tweets suggesting that, because she’s politically savvy.