Kay's spokesman first out of the gate post Ft. Hood with attacks...

In the wake of the Ft. Hood terrorist attack last week, there was a brief few day period of time when Rick and Kay were not attacking each other.

This morning Kay's spokesman Joe Pounder broke that truce with yet another attack that strains credibility on slickrickperry.com... saying that Rick is waffling on government run health care. This attack is possibly their weakest yet. It is like Hillary attacking Obama for not being sufficiently against the Iraq war despite his speeches opposing the war before the war, an attack her people briefly tried but quickly dropped when they realized just how weak it really was. This attack by Kay's campaign is so lacking in credibility that I am amazed they even used this as their first torpedo after the brief campaign break.

Still no attacks on Kay from Rick yet since the Ft. Hood shootings took place.

Actually come to think of it I have not seen an attack from Rick's peeps in more than a week now... the only hit they have done on her is that she missed a vote a week ago. The only hit before that was October 22 with a video about TARP funds being wasted they posted to their attack web page WashingtonKay.com...

I could be reading way more into this than I should but it appears that Kay's campaign has determined they have to attack daily or more and Rick's campaign has made a strategic decision to cool off a bit on the relentless attacks against Kay.

I think that is smart on the part of both campaigns. Although Kay was sniping at Rick for months and months all throughout the legislative session without nearly any response from Rick, Kay got off without being labeled a negative campaigner. When Rick hired out the pigs and flew the plane with the banner and had the bailout mobile and put out the cat videos and all of that during Kay's kickoff tour he immediately became some sort of mean bully...

Here is what I think is probably going on. When I talk to Rick's peeps, they don't seem like they are trying to convince anyone that Rick is up in this race. They just know it. Everyone knows it. Associations and "the lobby" which are all behind Rick don't endorse unless they have numbers to back it up.

From what I have been able to glean from my conversations with Rick's peeps they have internal polling showing him up by solid double digits... they aren't eager to share it, but they certainly do not deny that Rick is up by a healthy margin. The responses from them are very casual. Very calm and cool. Even when the Rasmussen poll came out showing the race virtually tied with Kay up by 2, they just kind of smirked as if they knew something they wanted to share but weren't going to.

It is the opposite story when I talk to people on Kay's team... they are far from calm and cool about polling. I'll leave that one right there but if you have had the misfortune to bring up that subject with one of Kay's peeps you know exactly what I am talking about...

I think these attacks or lack thereof show that Rick is liking where he is, and Kay is seeing the numbers and realizing that she has to continue tearing Rick down to have any shot. Just like the moderate Charlie Crist is currently doing to Rubio's campaign in terms of trying to pollute the waters about Rubio's credentials, moderate Kay's team is doing their best to make people think Rick is not a true conservative either. The difference is that Crist is still up by wide margins in the polls, while Rick is up over Kay by 12. The Texas primary is also coming up a lot sooner, so the necessity of attacks is more urgent... which is why you see puzzling and sloppy attacks that strain the credibility of those making them.

Rick should not shy away entirely from attacks, and Kay should not stop attacking completely. I am not recommending either of those courses of action. What I am saying is that Rick and his peeps are in a leader position which allows them to choose their attacks more judiciously. Kay is playing from behind and is therefore has to take more risks and more long passes which could lead to more rewards and touchdowns but could also lead to interceptions and 3 and outs. It's only the second quarter though so Rick cannot just sit on the ball and run out the clock. He's still going to need to complete some passes...