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.
I was disappointed more about this campaign than any of the others.
Angle lost because of voter fraud pure and simple. It is unbelievable that practically the whole state could turn Republican and Harry Reid keeps his seat. Even Harry’s son lost!!!
The conservatives need to quit pussy-footing around the issue.
Ground games aren't that complicated - it largely comes down to numbers and will. And the RNC has a web app where you can run one yourself that would have been made available to Angle.
You call like crazy for the month leading up to the election, re-double your efforts the 72 hours before the election, and then use your calls that have identified supporters to call the afternoon of the election and if needed make personal visits to make sure they vote.
You are absolutely correct. Across the board with some of the new candidates, there was appalling unprofessionalism on the part of their advisers. Anyone who has every worked in high-level politics could see it a mile away.
I have said it before, and I will repeat myself: we need a top-notch conservative organization that will essentially be a free school and consulting firm for first-time candidates. It needs to help in everything from hands-on grassroots organizing, to messaging, to hands-on staffing.
The old Free Congress Foundation was great at this, but with Paul Weyrich’s longterm illness and death, it lost focus. AFP does its best, but as the only legitimate game in town, it is simply stretched too far. ALG’s top guy is very capable, but their heavy-drinking political director is a walking disaster. Most of the other top groups — like LI and ATR simply have other core missions.
The Tea Party Federation’s Mark Lloyd is fully capable of creating and overseeing such an org. He is on their board. Let’s hope they appoint him to do it.
Can you show me any part of the four points listed that have anything at all to do with campaign logistics? 'Cause I'm not seeing it. All I see there are complaints about strategy, tactics, and criticism of the competence of the candidate and those who were running the campaign (unnamed).
I'm not sure that the writer actually understands anything about campaign logistics.
Reminds me of the line from the Princess Bride:
"I don't think that word means what you think it means."
The PA Dem tv ad were all the same:
“So-and-So voted for the (free trade) bill to ship jobs overseas. Vote for me, I’ll creat jobs.”
I was worried it might work (that strategy had worked in the past two elections), thank goodness for the smarter voters in PA.
The new TEA Party conservatives need to take over the GOP and then we can push foward with GOTV en masse. Look how much success has been accomplished already.
Out with the old RINO’s and in with the new conservative youngbloods.
here is the real story from my relatives in reno: harry reid came from behind on the last day because of two actions angle had no way to oppose: (1) his furious ground game (gaming industry support, union arm twisting, free food, free taxis to get out the vote, and on and on).
and (2) because most of the nevada republican establishment were actively knee-capping her, resulting a significant enough portion of rank and file republicans not turning out and/or voting against her for reid.
in other words, reid won because he had a ground game and sharron angle was denied one by her own party. reid won because the much of the republican establishment was actively working for reid (check the endorsement for reid by the repub mayor of reid, for example).
Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner.
Reid won by over five percent. I'm sure there was some voter fraud and we need to address that - but the percentage indicates that Angle fell well short as well.
Right here is the meat of the logistical issue - if the campaign doesn't take GOTV seriously, it founders - you need your best managers running GOTV - folks who can coordinate a lot of parallel activities.
Good post! The young people I saw understood the basics and were good at grass roots organization. Several of them talked about having attended “leadership school.” However, when it came to election day GOTV they were not prepared. Some of that was inevitable because when state and local GOP organizations refuse to do their job, it is very hard to play catch up in a short time.
At the end of the day, Toomey motivated Dems in SE Philly to overcome their enthusiasm gap and get out to vote for him. Corbett had the good fortune to be against a very weak Dem candidate in Onorato (I saw him at a train station, he looked like a guy who could be in the cubicle next to you at work, I had to go over to the other side of the platform to be sure it was actually him). We as conservatives have to be cognizant that if we push to have red-meat conservatives in purple states, that will be a motivating factor for Dem GOTV efforts, and we have to be prepared to react in kind to support conservatives.
I call BS. One can not explain the result in any way other thna fraud. Aparently most are unwilling to say so, but how else do you go from “up 4%” to a 6% loss in ONE DAY. With SEIU running the machines there is no doubt what occurred in Nevada and why the GOP lets it pass is beyond me. The FIRST investigation the New House needs to begin is into this election. IMHO
Did you not understand what I meant about arm chair quarter backs? They look back, usually from a distance of not being a part of the active campaign themselves, with little knowledge of what went into the organization of that campaign and somehow think they would have done much better. Typically they don’t allow for the media bias or the “good old boy” shenanigans of the party leadership.
And yes I was involved but most forget that every person who comments on a blog or to friends influenced the campaign. Any non supportive comment about a candidate influenced the thought process of the person reading or hearing the comment. I’ll use the non supportive comments of Rove as an example. The non supportive comments he made the night O’Donnell won the primary and throughout the campaign set the stage and were used by individuals and pundants to further degrade her credibility.
Thank you. The young people of whom you spoke probably attened Morton Blackwell’s Leadership Institution. It’s a great organization founded by one of the Founding Fathers of the New Right.
So WHAT is the Dems GOTV action that we don’t do? Are the people PAID to vote...are they BSSED in?? Do they THREATEN them??? How??
For all you know, the writer’s unnamed “spontaneous activists” consisted of three GOP hacks who weren’t happy with anything. Or, he could have made it up. That’s the danger of unnamed sources, especially when the person doing the talking has his broad brush out.
I agree we can learn from them. But because they are working in urban, high density Dem areas, GOTV will always be easier for them. They can send in paid union guys and knock on apartment doors more easily that we can drag people in from the fields. But we must do better!
The Dems threw out all of the stops - and the unions did as well. The GOP HAS to allocate more money to building GOTV infrastructure, and also has to educate its supporters of the need to come out and volunteer (I took seven vacation days to help out my candidate and probably put in about 400 hours of my own time around that as well).
Oh, and logistics is more than just GOTV - effective communications requires a fair amount of work as well - and that starts with the candidate being prepared on a daily basis to face voters and the press. It appears Angle was not serious about such.
That can be the problem with echo-chamber activists like yourself running around bitching about articles like this - at the end of the day Tea Party activists have to realize it takes a lot more than just good ideas and energy to win elections.
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