Posted on 11/06/2010 4:54:39 AM PDT by Kaslin
The fear and loathing after defeat in Las Vegas don't mask the reality that Sharron Angle's campaign was just not top notch.
The reasons for Sharron Angles loss to Harry Reid in a GOP surge year, when other conservative candidates like Rand Paul of Kentucky and Joe Walsh of Illinois won victories, are not rooted in strategy. Nor are they rooted in a flawed ideology that was too conservative. Instead, the loss was a product of simple logistical failures by the Angle campaign, failures they often were unwilling or unable to understand.
Amateurs talk about strategy. Professionals talk about logistics, said General of the Army Omar Bradley. Sure, he wasnt talking about political campaigns. Yet the famous military axiom, more often than not, holds for politics as well. The terrible swift sword of the South, General Nathan Bedford Forrest, described it as getting there first-est with the most-est.
So here is a look at the first-est logistical reasons Angle lost to Harry Reid:
1) Lack of experience at the top. Three weeks after Angle won the Republican primary, top Angle advisors were still looking for chinks in Harrys armor, as they put it. Really, they had absolutely no idea how they were going to take on Reid. None. Zip. Seasoned professionals would have been ready to execute. You know that IT guy who lives across the street; the guy I wave to in the morning? Yes, that guy would have had a better idea how to take on Reid than Angle did. Some ideas would have been better than no ideas at all. We just won the primary three weeks ago, a top member of Angles staff complained when asked why the campaign had stalled out. In that time, Angle went from a double-digit lead to down seven percentage points. She squandered her first-est advantage.
2) No message discipline. There are three things that can happen when a politician opens her mouth and only one of them is good. She can be quoted accurately but off-message; she can be quoted inaccurately and off-message; or she can be quoted accurately and on message. The outcome is always the responsibility of the candidate. Too often Angle was quoted off-message. Angle was infamous for verbal gaffes on the trail. These were due to her getting off the message that the economy sucks and its Harry Reids fault. Every social-issue question should have been answered saying: Interesting question. I think the thing Nevadans want to know about is why after Harry Reid spent trillions of tax dollars, Nevada still leads the nation in unemployment, foreclosures, and bankruptcies. It might have been a boring campaign, but Angle would have won by hammering her best-est argument.
3) Lack of experience in the middle. The campaign was littered with friends of friends who were very enthusiastic but lacked basic campaign experience. They shunned experienced activists (and advice), creating an us against them attitude in the GOP community. Even groups who were active in helping Angle win the primary were given the stiff arm once the general election started. Coalitions happen in the middle space of a campaign, and the Angle campaign squandered that space. Much of the Angle GOTV operation was by spontaneous activists who were frustrated by the lack of response from the Angle campaign. Although enthusiasm was at a high point in Vegas, Angle didnt exploit the most-est enthusiasm gap.
4) Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The campaign had a poor working relationship with the press, fostered by the fear that Angle too often got off-message. The press, Angle likely felt, had no business to report [her remarks] so verbatimly, to use Mark Twains apt phrase. Angle, then, rebuffed the press, which is always a mistake. Yes, it feels good to rebuff us. But the rebuff created a loathing by the press, which was returned by the campaign. Angle would have been wise to see the press as a delivery mechanism that is better managed than challenged. While this failure doesnt necessarily fit into any first-est with the most-est, category, it might have been the dumbest thing the campaign did. It made the campaign look like it lacked confidence in itself.
“Victory in the next war will depend in execution not plans,” Patton wrote to Eisenhower in 1926. The next war was World War II. That war was won by overwhelming the Axis powers by logistics, not strategy.
Its a lesson all candidates should study when they prepare to take on the Axis of Evil.
No one here should defend the Democrats.
We need to get voter id laws passed to help prevent vote fraud - but also need to make sure we are putting as much time and skill and energy into our GOTV efforts as the Dems do, if not more. That attitude is how Bush won in 2004.
There are no doubt people in every state like him, but Sharron is the ONE who stepped forward! We support the best CONSERVATIVE on the ballot, and she was it!!
Other than that, check the numbers in Nevada. Last time I looked there was a huge discrepancy in the number of voters who voted for the Republican candidate for governor but the Democrat for senate. Something like 60,000 voters split their vote and gave it to Reid and or otherwise voted for Democrat Reid, but not for the Democrat (Reid’s son) for governor. Now, that just doesn’t hold water!!
or Dick Durbin....but both give a more modern look to the Dems than Harry.
Whereas, the Pubbies are looking relatively hip baaabeee !
Seriously, in total, we are looking more current, especially if Michelle Bachmann gets into leadership. I don’t know Henserling, but he sounds pretty together. Boehner, Ryan, Cantor, the California rep. Mitch is the only leader looking a bit long in the tooth...on par with Durbin or Chucky, but still better than Harry.
Voter Fraud & the casinos telling their employees who to vote for-Reid. I won’t be going to Harah’s anymore. By the way we need to get rid of all unions. If a Democrat is behind they find “a bag or two of votes” in a car etc.” Unions were needed 50 years ago but now are a bunch of thugs & take Union dues & give it to the Progressives.
That’s the problem. Toomey, Rand Paul, Joe Miller, all no Nevadans. My starting point was obviously how g*dawful Harry Reid is as a senator. But I do realize that my sarcasm was denigrating Angle and thus unfair towards her.
It didn’t help that she didn’t carry Mineral County or Reno, both of which she should have carried, she was likely hurt in Elko because Reid came out at the 11th hour and made promises he would not support cap n trade and shut down their mining operations, he is a wiley old fox...... she was likely hurt by her late in the campaign comments on hispanics along with Reid’s Dream Act promises.
When are the voters going to rise up and demand an end to electronic voting machines?
I think that if we didn't have a primary runoff the Republican candidate in my house district would have not been strong enough to have beaten the 14-term congressman in my district. The front runner in the primary who had just over 32% in the primary lost the runoff to the second place finisher who had 30%. The process of campaigning for the runoff exposed some of the front runner's flaws especially in the candidate debates even though he was a much better looking candidate than the second place finisher who eventually won the runoff.
When was Angle ever up by double digits? She never had a fraud-proof (for Nevada).
You know they aren't going to stop it unless they have to pay a penalty, and dirtying up their brand is a doggone good way to get them to deal with it.
With the survival of civilization at stake we have to consider this a war, and somewhere short of just shooting, them we have to do everything we can to keep them on the straight and narrow.
Failing to do so is to betray our progeny and the future of America.
We must move toward purely electronic voting machines and away from scantron. It is entirely too easy to corrupt any system with paper in the audit trail.
So far noone here in NV has found evidence of vote fraud on the scale it would have taken to really make a difference.
Angle’s misstatements and bloopers combined with the tight relationship Reid has with the the buisness community here and in LV resulted in her loss. It did not help her to tell pregnant raped women to ‘make lemonade’ of their situation, nor the veiled threat to use the ‘second amendment’ if she lost at the polls. Her campaign was amateurish.
Yes, it does hold water. It was like Junior Soprano deciding who he’s better off with, Ritchie Aprile or Tony Soprano. In the
end the voters chose the competant (in local matters) Harry Reid.
Sooner rather than later.
The electronic system is fraud just waiting to happen.
Right. What is the unemployment rate again in Nevada?
>> Isnt it interesting that every arm chair quarter back would have had the candidate up by double digits<<
Then you asked
When was Angle ever up by double digits? She never had a fraud-proof (for Nevada).
If you re read my post does your question still make sense?
You mean like the SEIU controlled machines they used in Nevada? Funny how we never seem to have complaints here in AZ where we fill in a paper ballot with the little black circles and then watch while our ballot is scanned; and I think it is high time we got away from voting by mail in WA, OR, as well as all this absentee voting. If you are in town and breathing on election day show up at the polls and vote in person.
AND NO I NEVER STABBED ANYONE IN THE BACK! Accept the facts as they are.
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