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 Angle’s 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 wasn’t 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 Harry’s 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 Angle’s 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 it’s Harry Reid’s 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 didn’t 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 Twain’s 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 doesn’t 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.
It’s a lesson all candidates should study when they prepare to take on the Axis of Evil.
That's what happened with the campaign I volunteered for in PA-13. Allyson Schwartz had won the previous two elections by over 25 percent. She had a three million war chest that could have gone elsewhere in an easy race. Instead, she had to use it all to defend her seat.
And there is a good chance PA-13 will go bye-bye in redistricting anyway. That would be sweet justice indeed.
If the better lost the primary because he got in late, was a virtual unknown, or became ill, etc., then I’ll regret the Angle race. I do think she squandered an awful lot of time.
One serious problem is that Nevada does not have a primary runoff election. Angle only got about a 35% plurality in the primary to win it. In most states, she would have faced a runoff against the candidate with the second highest vote total. The runoff would have exposed Angle's weaknesses as a candidate. I'm pretty sure she would not have survived a runoff.
This guy was hired, apparently, to be the “beat reporter” on this campaign for Pajamas Media. So, he spent the whole time listening to every political hack in Nevada you can imagine on the Republican side complain about how bad the campaign was being run. Dirtboy, those kind of people live to carp. They all are convinced without a shadow of a doubt that they could do the job better than whoever is doing it.
Could the campaign have been run better? Apparently. They lost.
All I’m saying is that I’ll take this piece with a truck load of salt, though.
Yes! this is very true. The patriot and tea party groups have the energy and they have a righteous cause and they can raise money, but they need to professionalize when it comes to GOTV.
The GOP is terrible at GOTV effort. I would say they have No effort.
The GOP in Indiana is just awful. Theu usually never offer much support unless a RINO like Lugar is running.
This seems to be a problem in many states. Sonething needs o change if we are to win the big ones.
They somehow fail to mention that the leadership of the GOP is so stuck on the power hungry “my turn” mentality and inside the party power struggle that they really don’t care about the people. If they really did care the experienced handlers would have been sent to assist the Angle, O’Donnell, Miller, and other campaigns with all the power of the Party behind them. But no, The candidates that truly wanted to clean up the mess in Washington were shunned by the Party, vilified by the press no matter what they said, and still today fight by themselves to hold out for victory.
Arm chair quarter backs are about as useful as the south end of a dead horse facing north. Most of the time they only stunk up the place while they are alive and aren’t adding anything to the good of the cause now.
Once again, I’ll ask a simple question - what part of this article do you agree with and what part do you disagree with?
For later read.
The one area in which Republicans consistently trail Democrats is GOTV. We need some competent, knowledgeable political organizers to learn the Democrat methodology and employ it at every election. I think we assume we can win the hearts and minds on our message and we likely do. Getting those hearts and minds to the polls is another thing entirely. Let’s acknowledge what Democrats consistently do better than us, replicate it verbatim (at least the legal parts), double and triple the effort and see what can be accomplished.
I could possibly go for a paper trail if it was printed directly into some sealed box and they did have to match the # of signatures within maybe .01% or so.
I just hate recounts.. Hate, hate, hate em.
So tell us, then, what you find wrong with this particular article - and also, were you part of a campaign this time around?
Every time I reread it I see more how much the whole thing drips with whining by political hacks and “press” people about how they just weren’t listened to or respected.
If the campaign was surrounded by people like this, that’s almost certainly one of the major reasons Sharron lost.
The writer purports to be writing about a failure of “logistics,” but in fact every part of it reeks of the sort of “strategizing” that takes place in hotel watering holes.
Immigration
It’s interesting that Sandoval ran so far ahead of both Reids, Rory and Harry, and that there were quite a few more votes cast in the governor’s race.
So Harrah’s Reid wins again by hook and crook. The Losers are Nevadans and their economy in decline. Enjoy your leader Harrah’s Reid and his cadre of corrupt thugs taking the state down the sandy cliffs. So much for “Change” mantra of the demoRats by reelecting the same tired old Fraud.
I know there was a GOTV organization in PA with Corbett and Toomey - but the Dems surpassed that in SE PA and almost overtook Toomey as a result (Onorato was such a lame candidate that it did little for him). The Dems were able to motivate against Toomey because of his conservatism - so right there is an object lesson - if we are going to push for conservative candidates in purple states, we must get out and volunteer to help in the GOTV efforts (I heard the day before the election that that SE Philly GOTV center for the GOP was thinly staffed - while the Dems were pulling out all stops during that time).
I know there was a GOTV organization in PA with Corbett and Toomey - but the Dems surpassed that in SE PA and almost overtook Toomey as a result (Onorato was such a lame candidate that it did little for him). The Dems were able to motivate against Toomey because of his conservatism - so right there is an object lesson - if we are going to push for conservative candidates in purple states, we must get out and volunteer to help in the GOTV efforts (I heard the day before the election that that SE Philly GOTV center for the GOP was thinly staffed - while the Dems were pulling out all stops during that time).
Once again, please point out SPECIFICS that you disagree with - all you are doing is making the same kind of whiny commentary that you accuse the author of doing.
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