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.
And too many folks think that good ideas and being right are enough. It isn't against the Dem machine. The unions and government employees are voting their self-interest, and it shows in their effort and commitment level.
Call it strategy - call it logistics - whatever. But the NRCC “whack-a-mole” plan of spending money early in swing districts gave the appearance that those races were tightening up and ended up bringing a lot of seats into play that the Dems would not even have given a second thought to. Incumbents who usually had plenty of money to share with peers had to keep and spend it themselves.
Schwartz was one of those who had to hang on to her money because no one knew how far the wave was going to go. If it had gone up to 80, she may have been one of those who as swept away or who just barely survived.
Dems were playing catch up the last two months of the campaign and in many races, the die had been cast.
I never saw it as service - I met some great people and made a lot of new friends that I will work with again, either in campaigns or in volunteer organizations.
If the likes of Alvin Greene can get thirty percent of the vote, conservatives have a built in disadvantage. A conservative with weaknesses easily exploited by the LSM can’t overcome that handicap.
Angle was a disaster. Some of us knew this from the beginning but others refused to see it.
I knew Reid would win and it hacks me off because it was our chance to knock him out.
Angle was not strong enough to overcome the voter fraud that would happen.
Anyone who claimed Second Chance is a success in New Mexico in 2010 needs to have their head examined.
This interview by Baca was a indicator to me of how weak she was.
http://www.8newsnow.com/story/12670353/gop-senate-nominee-sharron-angle-breaks-her-silence
Tea Party cost this race.
Yep. They spend a fortune on TV ads and the real effort goes begging. I can name a couple of folks who would have had seats in Congress but for that silliness.
Why do people keep insisting that polls are always perfectly accurate representations of what voters will do?
Polls are only as good as their turnout models, and the exit polls show that the turnout model in nevada was wrong (except one republican pollster who seems to have gotten it right).
Nevada was one of those places where people inclined to vote for Reid turned out in higher numbers than expected. Some of this I believe was because we had an hispanic candidate running for Governor, which made hispanics more enthusiastic about voting; some was because of a solid push to get mostly-democrat union workers out.
In a state that tends democrat, the key is to say things that discourage your opponent's voters from showing up, while not turning off your own voters.
Angle somehow managed to spend too much time revving up her opponent's voters, and making the independents less interested in supporting her.
This site is filled with liberals that want to attack the tea party and conservatives take a look at come more trash...
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/it-has-to-be-said-christine-odonnell-lost-because
This guy posting this stuff is a total lib trying to attack those like yourself who actually fought and cares about the nations survival...
Classes are cheap, but the content is worth tens of thousands of dollars.
Who should attend?
Classes train: High Schoolers, College age/bound kids, and adults.
If you are considering a run or just working on a campaign and you care about winning you must attend. It'll make an enormous difference. Check it out and get ready for victory!
some
Assign a serious electoral threat to their leaders and they will spend all their money defending that leader, leaving their flanks exposed.
For the Donks, it's all about Power -- except when it's about EGO.
Cheers!
Interesting questions.
As in all campaigns, the variables that determine success OR failure are legion.
Why?
Well think a minute. A spoiled ballot is usually due to inattentiveness of the voter, confusion on the part of the voter, or just plain getting the instructions wrong. Which party's rank and file supporters are more likely to do that? Not the Republican!
Now when they go to recount, they start to look at those spoiled ballots and fight over those that are only marginally wrong. The election judges almost always rule in favor of these, as they want every vote to count. Since we don't have a law requiring an intelligence test to vote, these dummies then get counted in the end.
I really think that, from the way Schwartz reacted the last two weeks of the campaign, that her internals were showing Adcock within middle single-digits and closing. But Toomey gave the Philly Dems the GOTV foil to overcome the national Dem enthusiasm gap (the Dems hate his guts), and they poured a ton of money and effort into the race. Adcock ended up losing by under 13 points - half the marging of the two previous PA-13 races - and I think a lot of that came from the spillover from the anti-Toomey effort. I estimated that Dem turnout in Montco was over 60 percent - stunning - and Adcock’s winning model was for him to have 58 percent turnout (which he was very close to) and for the Dems to have a typical off-year turnout of 42 percent or so - that was the only way to overcome the 60,000 Dem voter registration advantage in PA-13 due to the chunk of NE Philly within it boundaries.
Either Lowden or Tarkanian should have gotten out of the way for the other. Let this lesson not be forgotten: Reid was able to procure the candidate he most wanted to run against, and he was ultimately correct.
Very disappointing aspect of this election cycle to see that corrupt, nasty bastard go back to DC.
At least he and Pelosi will be the face of the Democratic Party for 2012, which is a plus for us.
The union ground game is becoming more and more dangerous - witness Toomey’s close call in PA. This problem is not going away.
Thanks for the tip, I will be sure to attend a course or two of theirs before the next election. I realize now how much I still don’t know about campaigns.
You sacrificed your time and money.
1. This article is dead on. But is not the whole story.
2. Conservatives need to DROP the tampered voting machine issue. THERE IS NO PROOF IT WAS ANYTHING OTHER THAN VOTER ERROR.
3. There was voter intimidation no question. Stick to that.
Other things. Angle was not known in Vegas.
She had publicly chastised the Rep leaders who opposed her as RINOs (which they are) in public. They got payback.
She was for Yucca Mountain - very - not positive -big deal in Vegas.
She was opposed to all abortion. Again very big deal State wide. Reid made the campaign about her - she never made it about him. Which was my advice from the start.
I’m sorry, but from what I have seen, the Angle campaign had these problems and more. Rove was a jerk for voicing his concerns about O’Donnell before the general election - in a manner that could only hurt her, and after it was too late to change the primary results anyway. It would have been far better if he had delivered his critiques as a post-mortem. But I don’t see a problem in this particular post-mortem of a campaign that had the upper leg on Reid and squandered it. And although Rove is a vastly diminished figure now to me, he does understand GOTV and logistics - he built the Bush 2004 GOTV machine, the one time the GOP has overpowered the Dems in that department.
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