Posted on 09/22/2014 5:06:35 AM PDT by cotton1706
Before this week, I figured that the race to the intellectual bottom for Republican consultants would have been a doggoned close contest. For years Ive written many columns -- and a book -- that laid bare the cognitive dissonance and record of embarrassing losses of such wizards as Karl Rove, Haley (and Henry) Barbour, Rick Tyler, Andrea Saul, Charlie Black, Steve Schmidt, Matt Rhodes, Nicole Wallace and others. Ive even established a pretty good record of demonstrating the fallacy of using the Frank Luntz type focus group as a means for testing campaign messaging.
Somehow, though, the worst of them all had escaped my notice until a couple months ago. Allow me to introduce to you John Feehery, a consultant whose instincts are utterly tone deaf and as such is a serial loser in the game. But at least he appears to lack principles and be a student of revisionist history.
Thus he remains perpetually hired in the smarmy nepotistic world of establishment consulting. It is important to mention that this domain overlaps heavily with staffers and lobbyists. And it is demonstrably both smarmy and nepotistic -- observations I have made over a couple of decades from both the inside and outside planet Washington. In all frankness, this is a population that is collectively unimpressive and yet insufferably arrogant. They are staggeringly ignorant of the country and voter base they proclaim to understand like no one else. They are prisoners of predictable infantile formulas that they spout off while acting like they have said something brilliant.
So why would the aforementioned Mr. Feehery stand out in this race to the lowest of Dantes circles? Well lets start with his track record.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
The GOPe puts the “Fee” in Feehery.
Thanks for posting.
BTW, I promise you this is worth a few minutes. One of my favorites.
Oh, I read it in full! Excellent!
Hey! I'm John Feehery and I'm right in line with Karl Rove. Who is this CEW dude anyway?
Feehery was just getting started however. He later worked for Denny Hastert when the mushy Illinois Congressman was Speaker. Hastert lost the House after being a rubber stamp for W. Bushs worst agenda items for six years. Naturally Feehery also backed Arlen Specter over Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, insisting that Toomey could never win in Pennsylvania. Predictably, he supported Charlie Crist over Marco Rubio in Florida. In case you missed it, Specter and Crist are now both Democrats, albeit post mortem for Arlen. Perhaps Feehery should officially join them in the party. According to Red State, Feehery also supported moderate losers Rick Berg and Danny Rehberg in states Mitt Romney carried by 19 and 14 points respectively. Who knew it was possible to run squishier campaigns that Mitt Romney? (His record is worse than Wake Forest football, where Crist played quarterback ironically.)
Then of course, after Dave Brat dispatched of Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the primary this year, incoming Majority Whip Steve Scalise instantly tapped Feehery as a senior consultant in charge of staffing the Whip office.
Who knew it was possible to run squishier campaigns that Mitt Romney?
And yet the only Senate loss that you ever hear the gOpE consultants talk about is Akin (who was NOT the Tea Party guy).
Feehery is also one of “Tingles” Matthews favorite GOPe consultants, FWIW.
Yep, they base their entire case on Akin - and O’Donnell.
Hah, yeah, the “thanks” was for you - the “worth the read” was for others....:)
With a name like “Fairy” he must focusing on the gay vote.
Oh. Haha.
In my mind, I would find out who developed the “contract with America” idea in 1996 and place that guy prominently to develop a new theme for the GOP.
A key element the GOP abandoned that was part of the contract was the term limits.
GOP establishment support of Pat Roberts, Mitch McConnell and Thad Cochran proves the contract cannot be found.
I hope Rush reads this article and "re-lives" the correct history on this ... and the introduction of Rick Santelli just days later.
Conversely, while the Contract with America gets a lot of ink in the history books, it essentially was an exercise in overpromising and under-delivering. The result? Bill Clinton easily won reelection in 1996.
WTF? I hope both Speaker Gingrich and VP Cheney read this and "re-live" the accurate history of the Contract with America.
X, you axed about the NC Senate race in another thread, so I have directed you to this one - where I think the article answers your question as to how Hagan is hanging in there - even though that specific race is not part of this article.
Tillis and the Super PACS supporting him are running a classic establishment local campaign, thus missing the very zeitgeist that led to routs in 1994 and 2010 - the same zeitgeist we should be tapping into today.
Excellent article. I didn’t know the guy.
I assume that you’re saying Hagan is hanging against Tillis because Tillis is campaigning in the inside-the-beltway, GOP-E style....trying hard to look liberal enough for liberals to like.
Great way to turn off conservatives.
Great way to convince liberals they’re right, so they go ahead and vote for the total liberal.
Great article. That guy really sucks.
Any politician who relies on consultants sucks.
Thanks for comments, and yes, that is exactly what I am saying Tillis is doing. It is what he is doing. And it’s killing him.
Not to hi-jack the thread, but I do hope that this Hag(an) story gets a lot of traction in North Carolina .... So, It Seems Sen. Hagan Chose A NYC Fundraiser Over A Classified Hearing On ISIS
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