Only this: we struggled over the summer of 2010 in Delaware to get RINO Mike Castle out of government. We had no money & no press. We lobbied hard to get Sarah to endorse Christine O'Donnell all Summer and she kept her distance. One by one, Laura Ingraham endorsed, Tammy Bruce did, Michele Malkin did & Jim Demint did. But it was not until a couple of days before the primary, after two major polls showed Christine O'Donnell finally pulling out in the polls, and we on the ground knew that the race was won, that Sarah gave her late endorsement. To me it seemed that she jumped on the bandwagon and withheld her support when we really could have used it. I have never felt the same about her since then. Sorry. I know that there is a great deal of emotion where Sarah is concerned.
I think a lot of that is more about strategy and timing.
You want an endorsement to have the biggest impact possible. If she had endorsed O’Donnell earlier in the summer by the time of the vote in September it would have been old news. Instead, she endorsed her a few days before the vote and it was a big boost and provided a lot of late momentum. And again, part of that was probably selfish as well. She sensed COD had a great shot of winning and didn’t want to miss out on sharing in the glory. And supporting another woman candidate would only add to the potential roster of support for her down the road.
Endorsements can often be more effective the closer we get to the actual vote. If it’s too early they become diluted and fade over time.
Look here in NE. Stenberg got a lot of endorsements a while back and they’re all old news by now. No impact. But her endorsement of Fischer was at the just right time and came it would be most effective in actually moving the numbers. It gave Fischer momentum or “mom”-entum as the case may be, and based on the #s and recent polls it appears to have had a real impact.
So I think in a lot of cases the decision of when to endorse is more strategic and based on larger considerations.
It’s why to be honest I was a bit confused that she endorsed Cruz so early. I’d have thought it would have been better to wait until about a week or so out and then endorse instead of closer to 3 weeks out. The only thing I can think of is Cruz and his people saw they were in danger of not even making the runoff and felt they needed it now.