Posted on 06/06/2011 12:20:58 PM PDT by Al B.
As she prepares to enter the race in Iowa later this month, Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann has signed on high-profile political strategist Ed Rollins to run her presidential campaign, according to two sources close to Bachmann.
Rollins, who was Mike Huckabee's national campaign director in the 2008 campaign, is an experienced political operative with a well-earned reputation for his tough tactics and willingness to play hardball.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
Ed willing not allow her to go “anti-establishment” if she really was anti-establishment, which I now doubt she ever was, there is no use for this hire if MB was serious about shaking up the status quo!
Dunno. Bachmann has plenty of cash in her congressional PAC but I'm not sure what the rules are on using it. Hasn't seemed to bother her, though. She's been campaigning for president for months with no formal structure.
I think I'll tune in to Levin tonight. LOL. He's no fan of Rollins but has been a supporter of Bachmann.
LOL! If only!
LOL. Isn’t it funny that Henry Rollins always plays a cop or CIA agent or soldier in almost every movie he’s in? Sort of like Ice-T always playing the conservative cop on “Law and Order.”
Then Rollins should have been fired. That’s the candidates fault, not the campaign manager. I’ll hire a liberal Democrat if that liberal democrat is loyal, gets the job done for me, works 100%, and does what they are told.
That liberal Democrat of course will have no control over message, and will be one of several advisors on strategy, including Tea Party and hard conservatives. You never listen to just one voice. I’ve seen more than one candidate hire politically ignorant, inexperienced, and ginormous egoed Tea Partiers who sank their campaign just as quickly because the candidate listened only to them, and they knew zip about organization.
Of course people will say that Rollins will have influence over Michelle and change her message and her tactics. If he does then you got a bigger problem: a malleable candidate who can be influenced by one person. It doesn’t matter if she has an all-Tea Party crew this election, at some point she’ll kowtow to someone not so conservative because she was moldable from the start. Better to know sooner than later.
I agree.
This really doesn’t mean much. Rollins was on-call for Huckabee and now he’s probably on-call for Bachmann.
If she announces a campaign, that’s the action that will tell us she has surrendered to the dark side. Announcing a loser of a campaign where there is no hope of beating either Palin or Romney for the nomination only serves to increase her ego and increase the likelihood of a Romney win.
Crap, she’s doomed.
>>> Campaign managers are hired for 3 reasons: money, votes, and organizing. It doesn’t matter what they believe as long as they work for you and work strictly in the parameters you set.>>>
That’s not totally true. Normally the managers hire specialists for fund raising and organizing. The managers are hired also for communications, messaging, positioning and policy advice as well. Remember Karl Rove, “Senior Policy Advisor” to GWB? Same with David Axelrod to Barack Obama. It absolutely matters what they believe. ABSOLUTELY.
You can fire them all you want three days before an election for all the good it will do. Better to hire the right person in the first place.
“Now this is very interesting, and not in a good way.”
Can Rollins bring home the bacon? These guys are paid gunfighters. He isn’t making policy like Rove did for Bush. His job is to get her into the whitehouse.
Yup, shooting star - all burned out.
As we all know by now, Ed Rollins is a heavyweight political operative that is part of the Washington ‘establishment’. Rollins is supposedly ideology-free and for some, his hiring by Michelle Bachmann to run her upcoming presidential campaign is a sure sign that Bachmann has ‘sold out’ to the GOP establishment and will be attempting to siphon off Republican primary votes from Sarah Palin, whom the GOP hierarchy loath and are determined to stop. Some have posted that Rollins is just a hired hand, as it were, and that Bachmann will dictate policy positions, etc. Like most Freepers, I’ve never run a national political campaign and so I can’t state with any credibility that Ed Rollins won’t be the real force in a Bachmann campaign, but somehow, I don’t see Rollins, a 68-year-old, longtime political ‘insider’ with a thick resume and, one assumes, plenty of money, signing on to a Minnesota congressional representative’s small-hope campaign for the Republican presidential nomination unless he has an ulterior motive. I suspect, based on Rollins’ past harsh criticisms of Sarah Palin, it’s to ‘use’ Michelle Bachmann’s candidacy to ‘stop’ Sarah Palin by taking away votes Palin would otherwise receive from conservatives. I hope I’m wrong. If not, I hope this ploy fails.
20 in and it is a wide open race.
I'm not sure, given the current environment, that's the best strategy. Obama can attribute much of his 2008 success to not playing by the old rules. Cain's counting on playing by a new set of rules.
Of course, I'm not seeing much of anything in the way of real grass-roots support for Bachmann (even though I keep hearing people tell me its out there), so a traditional top-down campaign may be her only via option.
Michele, Michele, by putting Ed Rollins at the helm, what could possible go wrong?
Each candidate - campaign manager relationship is a little bit different, and I have no way of knowing exactly what that will be for MB and Rollins. However, for someone whose base of support is in the tea party group of folks, the choice of Rollins is very strange indeed. He does not have the foggiest notion of who supports Bachmann and why. You can’t simply be an agnostic “gun fighter” in this business. Ideology matters.
Consider others — Cain’s COS is a tea party guy and his staff includes AFP folks and Breitbart folks. Not sure about Palin’s folks, but I doubt they will be old guard GOP types. Just a strange choice.
Good points.
Consider also the ton of money just to kick off a primary run.
Bachman made quite a few calls to Hannity and Levin pleading for money in her tight race. I seem to remember maybe $13 mil mentioned. Don’t know how much is left over.
So one of the first things Rollins is offering her is access to money and possible old line local ground troops, the second tier GOP hierarchy.
Bachman’s last few call to Levin and Hannity as overly unctous and distasteful. First niggling thing that caused me to step away.
Then they will own her because she will owe them...
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