Why Angle Lost

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.

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.

I don’t know a lot about Nevada except that it is basically 2 large cities and a whole lot of wasteland. Drove from Vegas to Reno once and there isn’t a lot to fight for there.

Angle is a problem if there were just as conservative a candidate who could have won except for some mishap. As for me, I’ll not ever vote for a rino again. Better a known enemy, than a traitor in your midst.

So, the only other issue is a better conservative losing in the primary to a lesser conservative. If that “better” conservative lost simply because the “lesser” conservative ran a better campaign, then I’d have to say that the “better” was not really “better.”

If the better lost the primary because he got in late, was a virtual unknown, or became ill, etc., then I’ll regret the Angle race. I do think she squandered an awful lot of time.

And then there’s the question of fraud. Perhaps Ronald Reagan himself could not have defeated tampered electronic voting machines.

We’ve GOT to get rid of those things.

1) There were some in the GOP helping Reid.

2) There were some in the GOP huring Angle.

3) Vote fraud
"Angle Lawyer Requests DOJ Investigation of Reid Campaign, Harrah’s
UPDATE: The (proven-corrupt) Department of Justice declined to comment on the matter."

"Voter Fraud Alleged In Crow Wing County (MN)
he saw what appeared to be staff members of a mental health facility
fill out a client's ballot and tell another client who to vote for during absentee balloting."

"Minnesota GOP Reports 'Unacceptable' Problems With Counting Machines
.... multiple complaints about failing tabulation machines at polling places around the state.
.... complaints about machines in Duluth, Olmsted County, Lakeville,
Faribault, Mendota Heights and Eagan."

"George Soros And The Margin Of Theft
: Tuesday's results overcame many instances of orchestrated vote fraud, but not all.
Now the court cases begin, aided and abetted by the
Secretary of State Project funded by a Hungarian billionaire.
There will be recounts and court cases, and that is
where a state office — the secretary of state — comes into play."

"Angle Camp: Not so fast
Reid never got above 46 percent of the vote
and tonight he gets 51 percent? Ashjian and "none of the above"
got less than 3 percent combined. Something fishy is going on."

"Looks like fraud in spades in Nevada
In the last two weeks 95% of the polls had Angle winning .5 to 3.5%.
Reid is up by 5."

"Union Accused of Voter Fraud Involving Mentally Handicapped
Authorities in Crow Wing County are investigating possible voter fraud
involving people with mental disabilities …. a large group of mentally handicapped
people were told whom to vote for by mental health staff members and that staff filled
out the ballots themselves without the disabled voters close by."

" (Rochester) Offering Voters "Rides to Polls" (Coalition of Black Trade Unionists)
They told people to call the Rochester, NY office of the
COALITION OF BLACK TRADE UNIONISTS for these free rides,
and also said that the information is up on their website."

"National Organization Warns of Illegal Immigrant Voters
On October 28, WSBTV and the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported
that their recent comparison of jury duty records and voter registrations
found hundreds of non-citizens registered to vote and hundreds actually voting!"

"Vote Fraud Woes Already Mar Mid-Term Elections
some Nevadans who have tried voting early for Republican
Senate nominee Sharron Angle instead have seen
Democrat Harry Reid’s name appear on their electronic voting machines.

•Daytona Beach City Commissioner Derrick Henry and Genesis Robinson,
his campaign manager, face voter-fraud charges. In an apparent re-election tactic,
they allegedly completed 92 absentee-ballot applications with the names
of Floridians who never requested them or who had moved away.

•Bucks County, Pennsylvania officials are investigating 500 apparently
fraudulent absentee-ballot applications. Also, the Pennsylvania Voter Assistance
Office sent citizens letters encouraging them to apply for absentee ballots.
No such office exists."

"New Black Panther Seen At Polling Place [same polling place as 2008]
PHILADELPHIA - Fox 29 News spotted Tuesday a member of the New Black Panther Party
standing outside of a local polling place where voter intimidation was reported two years ago."

Diane Sawyer: “A few busloads of people can change a Congressional election”
George Stephanopoulos runs through the generic ballot numbers in the final WaPo/ABC poll
and sees a nine-point flip from registered to likely voters, for a final 4-point Republican lead.
Diane Sawyer then suggests how easily that, er, some folks could change the elections:
“A few busloads of people can change a Congressional elections.”"

"Tsongas told to move away from Tenney polling station
Clerk Christine Touma-Conway said Tsongas, who is running
for reelection against Republican Jon Golnik, went to the
Tenney School to greet voters. While she was there, she was shaking hands
and greeting voters inside the 150-buffer zone that is set by law to keep
campaigners and candidates away from the immediate vicinity
around polling places, Touma-Conway said. Also this morning, Tsongas went to the Timony School to donate baked goods.... "

"Nevada Union Illegally Coordinating with Reid Campaign for Votes
Crum reveals emails between Reid’s office and the union folks
telling them to force their members to get to the polls, setting up bus trips
for that purpose, and even sending a spread sheet file identifying workers who
had and had not voted and for whom they voted. This is all clearly illegal."

"(CT) Hartford and Bridgeport Polls Run Out Of Ballots
Not good. Hartford and Bridgeport are the two largest cities in Connecticut
and are where most Democrap vote fraud occurs."

"Angle Lawyer Requests DOJ Investigation of Reid Campaign, Harrah’s
National Review Online ^ | 11/2/2010 | Katrina Trinko
“The posting details and documents an orchestrated effort by
Harrah’s … to intimidate and coerce Harrah’s employees to vote for
Harry Reid for the United States Senate, to track whether or not employees
had or had not voted and to pressure supervisors to ensure that
the employees reporting to those supervisors were voting.”

"Former F.E.C. official on Reid strong-arming: ‘I’ve never seen anything so blatant’
There are two issues. The first is illegal coordination.
The Reid campaign is specifically asking a corporation with the help of a union to get voters"

"Harry Reid’s Son Oversees Suspect Election Machines In Nevada
Rory Reid, the son of Nevada U.S. Senator Harry Reid,
is in charge of the voting machines that were reported
as malfunctioning and are serviced by the SEIU."

"Sharron Angle's political team has accused Harry Reid of "stealing" the Nevada senatorial election
Free Republic even posted pre-election polling data versus actual returns"

"Harrah’s Bosses Put Squeeze on Employees to Vote in Pro-Reid Effort"

"Team Angle alleges voter intimidation by Reid campaign"

"Angle Accuses Reid Of Bribing For Votes"

"Nevada voting machines automatically checking Harry Reid's name; voting machine technicians are SEIU members"

"Harry Reid's Son in Charge of Nevada Voting Machines Used in Fraud" and related posts "

"The Scandal of Military Voter Disenfranchisement
About 2,500,000 men and women in the Armed Forces are of voting age at the present time.
Many of those in uniform are serving overseas, or in parts of the country distant from their homes.
They are unable to return to their States either to register or to vote.
Several sstates with late primaries applied for and received waivers for 2010,
and agreed to extend the deadline for the return of ballots mailed in from overseas.
In Illinois, the problem was not a late primary. Indeed, Illinois held its 2010 primary on February 2, 2010.
But 35 of 110 Illinois counties seriously missed the September 18 deadline.
One of the late counties was St. Clair County, home to 261,000 people and to Scott Air Force Base.
The U.S. Department of Justice is responsible for enforcing the MOVE Act,
but it seems not to take its responsibilities seriously
DoJ entered into a consent decree with Illinois that does not solve the problem. ”

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