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.
It was fraud. I toured Nevada three times. Rallied in every city and town bigger than 700, including Searchlight (20,000 at the rally plus thousands more who were turned away because there was no more room). Nevada hates Harry. Anyone BUTT Reid was the theme slogan throughout Nevada!!
You are stabbing Angle in the back as we speak! Idiot!!
And not only no, but HELL no are we going to lighten up on our pro-life fight. Don’t like it, move on!!
No western state has a runoff. OK and TX are the closest states to NV with runoffs.
Is that awful ol’ Lugar really going to run again in 2012. Maybe he will switch parties and spare us the impossibility of beating him.
So far he says he is going to run. I am not sure he will because he is very unpopular here anymore.
We need to be able to run a good opponent. If we do. Lugar will lose.
It would help Indiana if we could get a really sharp state GOP.
I see a failure and a GOP that won’t support good candidates.
Marvin Scott being one of them. He was forsaken by the state and national GOP because he was running against Andre Carson. His support was shameful. The man is a staunch conservative.
The Republicans won just about every race there was in Nevada EXCEPT for Harry Reid. Even Harry’s son lost. I know Reid won by over five percentage points. But that makes it even more statistically improbable. Especially since he only won in three counties. It would have made it look less suspicious if he would have won by one or two points. Five points should make anyone raise their eyebrows. This is a fraud.
Ah yes, I keep forgetting the seedy underbelly of the Democrat Party and their operatives.
That election was completely fixed. Angle could have been anyone—analyzing what she did or didn’t do is worthless. It’s time to start prosecuting this kind of fraud. To me, usurping the vote in a democracy oughta be punishable by firing squad. You might as well just hand over your nation to a Marxist dictator as allow scum to rig the vote.
The GOP candidate for governor was Hispanic. It is entirely within the realm of possibility that Hispanic voters would split their tickets in that situation. After all, Dingy Harry made it ethnic, and it could well have screwed his own son in the process.
Like I said before, I will volunteer to help look at EVERY frigging ballot cast in order to match it to a LEGITIMATE voter. And, I will bet you the end results will be drastically different. Then, I will testify against EVERY ILLEGITIMATE voter. Until we, as a nation, can guarantee one vote/one legitimate voter, we are simply pi$$ing up a rope. I’m sick of getting all wet. It is as simple as a “hand print” computer data base. And if certain select groups feel “disenfranchised”, I will gladly hand them my rope.
VOTER FRAUD...!!
Angle leading in the polls by 4 pts for over a week. Reid beats her by 6 pts????
Unionized casino workers and crooked casino owners and who knows what else.
VOTER FRAUD...!!
Consider THIS
I see no evidence of any of the above ... yet. I also smell compromise in the air around Boehner and McConnell. Hope I am dead wrong.
Here in Maine, we won everything in sight. BUT, Baldacci hang-overs staff every department. Every township is paying hordes of useless Affirmative Action Ani and o-so-politically-correct dimwits from away big money to run everything. WTF happens after the victory party? <[p>The damage done by liberals in government requires ruthless countermeasures fast. Do we do ruthless? Are we quick about it?
Dirtboy.What did you see in GOTV that we can either emulate with our voters so slow down in a city like Philly. It seems to me these large cities are near impenetrable for us at this point.
he had everything to campaign on....the horrible economny, the corrupt rat establishment, the open borders, the Cap and Trade, the health insurance mandate, the mosque in at Ground zero...
the tarp, the buyout of whole companies by the govt as well as all the stimulus and the huge deficit...
yet he ran another milktoast campaign...the hardest hitting commercials were made by the RNC or the RNSC or outside groups....
granted we have fraud...but Rossi should have beaten this mindless lackey...
Humboldt.......56.90%........32.12%
Elko.......... 63.55%....... 25.25%
Pershing...... 52.71% .......34.39%
Churchill .....63.40%....... 27.80%
Storey........ 52.67%....... 39.50%
Lyon ..........59.95%....... 32.39%
Carson City... 47.96%....... 44.64%
Douglas .......59.04%....... 34.57%
Landers....... 63.17% .......25.61%
Eureka ........69.04% .......18.05%
White Pine ....67.33% .......21.51%
Nye ...........54.33% .......36.66%
Esmeralda .....67.51% .......20.15%
Lincoln .......67.27% .......22.68%
Clark .........41.35% .......54.36%
Washoe........ 44.87% .......49.87%
Mineral .......43.19% .......44.93%
Average .......58.14% .......32.51%
Median ........59.04% .......32.39%
In the three counties she lost, the results shows the following:
In Mineral 1190 voted Republican for the House seat while 559 voted for the Democrat. Yet 822 voted Republican for the Senate while 855 voted for Reid. We're not talking about independent voters here, we're talking about Republicans/Democrats. This is totally inconsistent with what the other counties are showing.
Finally Clark County has three congressional districts. The number of people voting for the Republican/Democrat House candidate was 572336. Yet the number of people voting for the Senate candidate was 464988; a difference of almost 110,000. One has to wonder WHY didn't almost 1/4 of the electorate who voted for either a Republican/Democrat in the House race didn't bother to vote in the Senate race. Also, the House Republicans captured 199,204 of the votes, yet Angles only captured 192,257. For the House Democrats, they captured 238,001; yet Reid captures 252,749 of the votes.
One never knows if the levers are working properly as there is nothing to check.
Our county seems to do fine with filling in ovals with black markers. Before you get to the booth, you have to show ID, verify address and sign the list. Then you’re given a ticket (red for Republicans, blue for Democrats, this time anyway) that you trade for a ballot. I guess they keep count that way, in case any ballots are “found”.
No one can touch your ballot; you have to put it in the scanner yourself. I spoiled one and had to give it to the Democrat and Republican ticket people. Then I had to fold it myself and put it in a spoiled ballot envelope. I can only surmise that a shredder isn’t allowed on the premises for appearance’s sake. I’ve never heard of anyone finding ballots here. Then again, this is a red county.
I like it.
First, we need more people volunteering - you have to have a robust 72 hours before the election. Second, you have to aim higher - there are registered Republicans who have never voted - you have to work hard on convincing them to get to the polls. And third, if needed, hire canvassers the way the Dems did the weekend before the election.
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