Internal Turmoil... uh... ya think?

Now that Rick is out of the race... notice not before... Jason Embry got some Rick staffers to talk about the internal divisions...

Here is his story (link). Excerpt follows...

A close-knit team of aides and advisers helped make Gov. Rick Perry the state's most formidable politician in the past 12 years, writing and executing one winning game plan after another in Perry's three gubernatorial elections.
But key members of that team played smaller and smaller roles as Perry the presidential candidate ambled toward poor showings in Iowa and New Hampshire and, ultimately, a decision to depart the race two days before Saturday's South Carolina primary.
[SNIP]
 Carney and Allbaugh butted heads. Aides loyal to Carney say Allbaugh was intimidated by Carney and wanted to play a strategy role for which he was not suited. Allbaugh sympathizers say Carney was unwilling to share power. On the Sunday night after Thanksgiving, according to three Perry campaign sources, Allbaugh told Carney not to return to Austin.
"The message was, 'We'll call you if we need you,'" one source said.
Carney has said little publicly about his departure, and he declined to comment for this story. But he told the Union-Leader in New Hampshire on Thursday, "I haven't been actively involved in the campaign for quite a while, a few months."
When the Union-Leader asked him to explain how his role changed, he replied: "I honestly don't know the answer to that. I don't know what happened, and I was there."

Joe Allbaugh seems to be the common denominator in all of this...

In the Texas Tribune Jay Root has a scathing piece on Joe Allbaugh's apparent ineptitude (link). Excerpt follows...

“We’ve got to make sure we put our best foot forward for Rick and Penny,” a senior adviser recalls Allbaugh telling the gathering.
Rick and Penny?
Presumably, he meant Anita Perry, the governor’s wife.

Rick and Penny? Allbaugh was way out of his element according to this reporting...

In the ashes of his campaign collapse, it is now clear that the tension between two distinct camps — Allbaugh and a group of Washington, D.C. consultants on the one hand, and longtime Austin-based staffers on the other — became so toxic that people who had been willing to lie down on the tracks for Perry were demoralized, worn out and looking for the exit ramp.
“I’d rather take a shower with Jerry Sandusky than go through another month of this,” one veteran Perry adviser said in late December, just before the Iowa caucuses. “This campaign isn’t capable of winning.”
Staffers took to calling Allbaugh “Jack,” and eventually “Uncle Jack,” because he so frequently called people by the wrong name, often even labeling the Perry operation the “Bush campaign.” It seemed that he was stuck in the previous decade, some of them said.

That is amazingly harsh... rather take a shower with Jerry Sandusky? Oh my...

It also sounds like the online team was being stymied and micro managed by Joe Allbaugh...

In early December, at a meeting of the online team at the Stephen F. Austin Hotel, Allbaugh made it clear that he had taken over. One participant at the meeting said the online team had been trying for weeks to gain approval for targeted online media outreach, harnessing technology to draw engaged supporters in — a strategy developed when Carney and Johnson were still running the show.
Allbaugh wanted more banner and display ads, which the online team considered a less effective and outdated approach, the adviser said.
Allbaugh "put his hands on the table pretty forcefully,” the senior online strategist said. “He said, ‘You guys have to forget everything you’ve done up to this point.'”
“'I’m in charge,'’’ the official quoted Allbaugh as saying. “'What you’re going to do is what I decide is best for this campaign.'”

From my observational perspective... and from some drinks with two or three of Rick's real team over the past few days... I have to say the animosity toward Joe Allbaugh is set to 11 as Spinal Tap might say... it is also essentially unanimous and unfiltered... there is hardly any room for deviation... Joe Allbaugh is 100% the problem in the minds of the people I trust in Rick's organization. These aren't 20 year old interns venting about their mean bosses. These are accomplished and experienced peeps with highly specific problems with how things were run.

Here is one thing that has not been fully exposed in any of these obituary stories on Rick's campaign... not making the Virginia ballot. That was a blunder that probably ended Rick's momentum he seemed to have at that particular moment... Rick could have then gone into Iowa and said... "LOOK... it is down to Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, and me... I am the only 'not Romney' candidate with the organization and the money to win... those other jokers could not even make the ballot in future states... so it is time to coalesce around me the only competent and credible candidate who has what it takes to go the distance..."

Instead... Rick not only didn't make the ballot, his disqualification was the first to be announced... so it sat out there for hours before he was joined by Newt and others...

In terms of strategic blunders, every reporter harps on "debate prep...." as if raising millions less in money and doing several days more of debate prep could have made the difference... "Oops" happened long after Joe Allbaugh had taken over let's remember... Rick got better at debating not because he had more debate prep sessions but because he was more experienced at debates... he did what 15 or 18 by the end? Also from everything we are reading Rick's back pain really did play into it all... and that seems to have subsided in recent weeks... which explains why he has been sharper in more recent debates...

Peggy Fikac and Rick Dunham offer some insight (link)...

When the debates commenced, Perry was a self-described piñata. He also sustained self-inflicted wounds well before the infamous “oops” moment when he could remember only two of the three federal departments he wanted to close.
Perry sometimes seemed confused, as in this Florida tongue-twister: “I think Americans just don’t know sometimes which Mitt Romney they’re dealing with. Is it the Mitt Romney that was on the side of — against the Second Amendment before he was for the Second Amendment? Was it — was before — he was before the social programs, from the standpoint of — he was for standing up for Roe vs. Wade before he was against Roe vs. Wade? He was — uh — for Race to the Top, he’s for — Obamacare, and now he’s against it. I mean, we’ll wait until tomorrow and, and, and see which Mitt Romney we’re really talking to tonight.”
The campaign source said Perry had written the line out on the pad in front of him. “He just couldn’t get it out.”

What about the strategic blunder no reporter is talking about... deciding it was Iowa or bust without creating any sort of backup plan in the event that Iowa didn't go as well as planned...

Here is the thing... Rick could never do well in Iowa with his anti ethanol subsidy principles... look at who did well in Iowa... it was ethanol lovers Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney... but Rick clearly ran out of money after Iowa because Joe Allbaugh did not manage the money very well... if Rick had spent the same amount in Iowa I bet he would have gotten roughly the same place in the polls... and he could have saved it and waited around for the right opportunity... most of those who have surged in this race have surged because they have played under the radar for a while... Rick could have done that then surged after Iowa and New Hampshire... perhaps closer to Super Tuesday when it became a true dichotomy between Mitt Romney versus Rick...

And here is the other thing... when New Hampshire got cut out entirely that sent a message that Rick was a regional candidate... regional candidates don't do well even in the region they are supposed to do well in because even the home town boy is considered unelectable if he doesn't even give it a try in difficult terrain like New Hampshire... by going Iowa or bust Rick not only ended his chances in New Hampshire he ended his chances in South Carolina... and speaking of South Carolina... Rick abandoned South Carolina until retreating there after Iowa... his campaign should have been continuing the fight in South Carolina all along rather than trying to perform well from scratch and from a position of weakness after Iowa...

Other strategic blunders from my perspective that occurred under the Joe Allbaugh regime... you had these wonderful policy plans... just top notch... by far the best of any candidate... and what seemed to happen after Joe Allbaugh came in... they were rarely if ever talked about ever again... what happened to the flat tax? What happened to the big bold reforms that people got so excited about in the first place? Those were sidelined... there was intermittent talk of a part time Congress, and I am sure it tested well in polls but that was just one piece of a bigger and more comprehensive plan to clean up the cesspool known as Washington DC....

On the "Strong" ad... obviously it was a horrible mistake... it is one of the most disliked things on all of You Tube... it made Rick into a clown and will hurt his national reputation long into the future... it was on a bizarre narrow message when everyone cared about jobs and he had the best jobs credentials of any one in the field... at the time we heard that Tony Fabrizio hated it because he was himself gay... and he was some sort of lone voice of reason... but we now know it was mostly the Austin staff that hated it and the Washington consultants pushing it... that ad more than oops or anything else will likely be why Rick won't be able to win the nomination in 2016 when Obama is finishing up his second term...

Speaking of ads... why did Rick's team not focus more on how he had done amazing things in Texas... they had one or two lines about a million jobs while the rest of the country lost 2 million... but those sounded like abstract numbers standing alone and engineered or fudged to make Rick look good... because all statistics are fungible... Rick's team did engage bloggers and equip us with lots and lots of facts on the subject through daily emails, online chats, and conference calls... but it seemed like there was a big disconnect from Rick's blogger messages about all the amazing things Rick had done as governor of Texas which would have worked in my humble opinion... versus his television ad and direct mail messaging which clearly had no discernible or perhaps a negatively discernible impact... Rick's blogger out reach was also the only place I saw any serious push back on the in state tuition issue or the Gardasil issue for example... it was almost completely absent every where else...

One more thing from Christie Hoppe (link)....

One campaign insider told me Carney was effectively fired from the presidential campaign by Joe Allbaugh – brought in as the “make the trains run on time” guy — around Thanksgiving and has no remaining contractual ties to Perry.
Asked if Carney would work with Perry in the future, the insider said, “I don't see a scenario where that would happen,” adding that Perry “let Joe Allbaugh make personnel decisions, and this is the fruit of that.”
Of course, politics is business, and Carney told me by email, “Whomever speculated on what I might do or not do is flat-ass wrong.”
But politics is also personal, and the people who'd worked so hard for Perry in Texas looked shell-shocked after the off-the-rails campaign led to them being sidelined, then nationally skewered.

I hope that this disaster of a presidential race doesn't impact the 2013 legislative session... I hope Joe Allbaugh is nowhere near the Capitol when this all blows over... the disaster he left behind at FEMA under George Bush was clearly not an outlier in his career. Would Carney go back to run Rick's team after being discarded so casually when the heat got turned up a bit? We will see won't we...  so far Dave Carney has shown himself to be a big man in all of this so I wouldn't put it past him to be a big man and take back over as if nothing had happened.

Emily Ramshaw closes with this (link)...

Republican insiders in Texas say the bulk of the rebuilding Perry needs to do is with his longtime state-based staff, some of whom felt they got big-footed by national consultants in a rough-and-tumble campaign. Whether Perry simply finishes out his term as governor, runs for re-election, or makes another national run — as his advisers have suggested he could do — he will need them in his corner.
“There are a lot of bruised ribs,” said the Perry adviser. “After the requisite period of time, I think you’ll see all the familiar and competent faces.” 

How bad were things that Rick not only lost his race for president... but his famously loyal team also feels like they don't know where they stand with Rick any more?

I don't know all the details of what actually went on... I doubt anyone does... even many of those on the inside... but I can say I had a feeling all along that a lot of this KIND OF stuff was going on, and I give Rick's peeps a lot of credit for keeping it to themselves even as the Washington consultant peeps were selfishly spilling the beans to POLITICO before Iowa even took place. How many leaks were there throughout this campaign after basically zero leaks in the history of Rick's political career with Dave Carney as the bossman? I hope candidates look at those Washington consultants and think twice before bringing them into their teams. I also hope that this marks the end of the Allbaugh era in Perryworld... and I hope Rick can go back to being an effective governor who fights the establishment rather than bringing them in to sink his fortunes...

Texas needs Rick to finish his term strong and decide what comes next... if he finishes strong in the way many of us believe he can he will be in the driver's seat yet again when that time comes for him to decide what comes next... while if he continues down the path he has been on for the past few months he will be road kill... I hope with some reflection and the daily grind of the campaign trail out of the way he can see how he was taken advantage of and how he trusted the wrong peeps...

Abby Rapoport is right... Rick should have stuck with his 2010 strategy...

While many seem quick to write the Rick post mortems and say that the Texans just were not ready for prime time... with all due respect that is nonsense. Rick's Texas team we now know was cut out extremely early in the process...

Abby Rapoport writing in CNN nails it when she sez Rick and his peeps should have run the 2010 game plan (link). Excerpt follows...

But as we review all the political errors and bone-headed gaffes the campaign committed over the last six months, the biggest mistake is easy to miss: Perry and his team didn't stick with the strategies that made them such a strong political force in his home state.


Rick Perry's 2010 gubernatorial campaign was a masterpiece of political strategy. Running against U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, a politician who had both better poll numbers and deeper pockets, Perry was supposed to be the underdog. By all appearances, the only way he could win, was if he could get a low-turnout primary of party loyalists.
Of course, that's not what happened. His team decided to pursue what was, at the time, an unusual strategy. They charged for yard signs and didn't bother with mailers. They held off on television until just before the primary. They invested most of their dollars instead into a massive grassroots effort known as Perry Home Headquarters. They asked supporters to find 12 pro-Perry votes among their friends and family and then promise to get those people to the polls. Perry ultimately won the primary in a landslide?with unprecedented turnout.
It was an innovative idea based in science. In 2006, then-chief Perry strategist Dave Carney had allowed four political scientists to get up close to the campaign and study which tactics yielded the most votes.Such collaboration is almost unheard of, but the Perry folks used the information to create one of the most effective grassroots operations in the country. The professors found that most typical campaign tactics, like mailers and robocalls, have almost no impact on delivering votes. Television's effect was short lived. Only grassroots organizing actually seemed to deliver votes.
It's a nice tale of political innovation. Who could have guessed what would follow?
Perry's campaigns in Iowa and New Hampshire were almost entirely based around television ads. In South Carolina, the team even invested in mailers?which their own research said was ineffective. Grassroots campaigns take a long time to establish, but Perry and his team chose to wait until August to jump into the race. No aspect of his presidential bid had half as much innovation as his 2010 effort.

I don't get it either... it makes no sense... Rick ran a cookie cutter campaign spending what seems to be millions of dollars on wasteful tactics like direct mail... they didn't heed their own lessons from 2006 and 2010...

Why?

Because as we now know Dave Carney was cut out extremely early... a true shame because I can't imagine he would have allowed Rick to flame out as badly as he did in the end... I am not saying Rick would have won but he definitely would not have burned so many bridges on his way out... making it much more difficult to win future office in Texas or nationally...

Take away the peeps... take away the personalities... I am more angry that I maxed out in my federal donation to Rick's campaign believing he would run a 2010 type of campaign... only to see my dollars wasted on Washington consultant mercenaries who didn't even care about Rick, his legacy, his reputation, or his future... THAT is what makes me angry... regardless of whether it was Dave Carney or Joe Allbaugh at the helm... and like I said... now we finally know that it wasn't Carney... a hunch I had for quite some time based on some of the bizarre things that the campaign did...

I had a feeling this was the case... Dave Carney wasn't "actively involved in the campaign for quite a while, a few months."

This makes everything make much more sense about Rick's huge campaign implosion. I had a sense that this might have been the case...

Let me just let this speak for itself (link)...

David Carney of Hancock, a nationally-known political strategist, had been Perry's top political adviser since he ran for lieutenant governor of Texas in 1997. Carney and others left the Newt Gingrich campaign in June to go with his long-time friend and boss as he mulled a presidential run, and eventually decided to run.
At first, Carney was Perry's chief presidential campaign strategist, but in the fall, when a new regime headed by former George W. Bush advisor Joe Allbaugh was brought in by Perry, Carney's role was severely diminished, even if he was not officially demoted.
As it turned out, Carney was not in South Carolina today when Perry dropped out. He was home in Hancock.
In fact, Carney told the Primary Status today, “I haven't been actively involved in the campaign for quite a while, a few months.”
Carney, a well-respected political operative who got his start in Gov. John H. Sununu's State House office in the early 1980s and who headed the George H.W. Bush (41) White House political office, declined to criticize the Allbaugh regime in retrospect.

It takes a big man... and I am not talking about mass... to do what Dave Carney did here... here is Dave Carney, who arguably is responsible for Rick's rise to presidential contender status in the first place... Dave Carney who has been with Perry for more than a decade... Dave Carney who we now know was not even really actively involved in Rick's campaign for years... Dave Carney who nevertheless has been the scapegoat for the ineptitude of unscrupulous Washington based consultants who actually were running the show... here is Dave Carney with a chance to settle scores and correct the record... so loyal that he refuses to engage in sniping... instead of telling the world the short comings of Joe Allbaugh... the Bushie who hand picked and groomed Michael Brown as his successor at FEMA... instead of pointing out that he was not even involved in the abortion of a campaign over the past few months... Dave Carney chose to stay above the level...

Think about that...

Here is Dave Carney... the guy who helped make Rick the success he has been... and who has been blamed for Rick's presidential implosion even though he hasn't even been involved for a long long time... here is Dave Carney, with a perfect opportunity to settle scores and let everyone know just what he really thinks of Bushie Joe Allbaugh... here is Carney's opportunity to deflect blame onto blame's rightful owner... and what does he do? He "declined to criticize the Allbaugh regime" in retrospect.

Like I said it takes a big man to do what Carney did...

A blog that popped up over the past few months the Rick Perry Report agrees with me (link)...

Harsh criticism was leveled against Texas Gov. Rick Perry's national campaign manager Dave Carney by unnamed sources in Politico the Saturday before the Iowa Caucuses. The article didn't help the Iowa effort, and those "sources" interviewed revealed an astonishing amount of disloyalty to the candidate that hired them.
But when you're a political consultant, and you see that the polls aren't going your way, it's better for the life of your career that you are the first and loudest to place the blame on the other guy. This is especially true if you're inside the Washington D.C. beltway. That fall guy became Dave Carney.
Carney was hailed as a super-genius of political campaigns who, after leading the Perry fundraising to a record $17.4 million in donations in just 49 days, skillfully engineered Perry's airborne assault into the Iowa narrative, just when Iowa was attempting to create the state's own narrative that candidate Michele Bachmann won the Ames Straw Poll. The bump a straw poll victory would have been was not to be because of Carney's maneuver. Playing off the Perry image, Perry announced his candidacy in South Carolina just as the straw poll results were announced.
Sasha Issenberg scrambled to release his book that relied upon scientific studies of the 2006 Perry Gubernatorial campaign. It was released as an ebook on Amazon just as Perry plunged into the presidential campaign: Rick Perry and His Eggheads: Inside the Brainiest Political Operation in America, A Sneak Preview from The Victory Lab (Amazon link in new window). "As general campaign consultant, Carney was suspicious of the various vendors selling their wares to political campaigns," Issenberg explained. "The television vendors told him to buy more TV ads, the printer told him to buy more direct mail. He wasn't sure any of it worked."
The Perry campaign of 2006 hired scientists to study the effects of various campaign techniques. Issenberg's full interview:

Issenberg explains that the results of the studies, as explained in his book, indicate that candidates get more favorable coverage in local media when the candidate visits personally than from the statewide or national press pool reports. Aggressive retail campaigning was the centerpiece of the Carney campaign, and it was copied by Allbaugh even after Carney was vanquished to Fort New Hampshire. There, like Confederate General Lloyd Tilghman at Fort Henry, Carney was abandoned and cut off, starved of resources and forced to surrender with only 1,500 pitiful votes on primary day in January.
Carney gave his postmortem of sorts to the New Hampshire Union-Leader. His summary: There wasn't enough time to prepare and raise the cash to compete, the early debates became a huge hurdle, and there wasn't enough candidate time to tend to the "vineyard" of support he could have grown in New Hampshire.
No where in his remarks were snarky criticisms of his peers or the candidate himself.

The POLITICO article that hit just days before the Iowa caucuses and arguably helped to stunt Rick's mild surge in the polls at that time was entirely one sided... it was all anonymous Washington consultant hacks trying to save their reputations and hides... all while Rick's actual loyal team held their fire and remained loyal and above the fray... in fact here was Dave Carney's quote at that time (link)...

Carney, a longtime GOP strategist who worked for Bush 41’s presidential campaigns, declined to comment for this story.
“I don’t think so,” he said in response to an email asking to get his side. “Not much good can come from process stories like this.”

He is right... and in the history of Rick's team I have never seen anything like that POLITICO article. Heads should have rolled that very day. In fact I would wager that if heads had rolled a lot of people might have had more confidence in Rick... and you would have avoided Erick Erickson calling for campaign changes (link)...

Here is a blog I wrote but didn't publish months ago because I was having trouble getting answers from my contacts at Rick's campaign who were extremely tight lipped until Friday, and I didn't want to post something without knowing I was on the right track from discussions with them... what follows is a blog I wrote in early December...

This article from the Huffington Post... yes that Huffington Post... is stunning (link). Excerpt follows...

WASHINGTON -- Texas Gov. Rick Perry's newest television ad criticizing the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell was created over the objections of at least one top staff member, sources in the Perry campaign tell The Huffington Post.
The spot, which began airing in Iowa on Wednesday, features the governor questioning why soldiers can serve openly in the military while children "can't openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school." Coming a day after Perry criticized the Obama administration for using foreign aid to defend gay rights abroad, the ad was one more note in a fairly overt dog whistle aimed at the Hawkeye State's influential evangelical voting block.
But not everyone was comfortable with the script. When the ad was being crafted several weeks ago, Perry's top pollster, Tony Fabrizio, called it "nuts," according to an email sent from Fabrizio to the ad's main creator, longtime GOP operative Nelson Warfield. In a separate email to The Huffington Post, Warfield confirmed that the ad was made over Fabrizio's objections.
"Tony was against it from the get-go," Warfield wrote. "It was the source of some extended conversation in the campaign. To be very clear: That spot was mine from writing the poll question to test[ing] it to drafting the script to overseeing production."
That a presidential campaign would suffer from internal disagreements over a controversial ad or broader campaign strategy is far from shocking. High-stakes political operations are often rife with strategic disputes. But it is rare for those disputes to spill over into public view and even rarer (at least when it comes to Republican politics) for them to center on the issue of gay rights.
It just so happens that several members of Perry's campaign staff have worked to advance LGBT causes inside the GOP. Liz Mair, a consultant to the Texas governor, serves on the advisory board of the group GOProud. And Fabrizio has done polling for the Log Cabin Republicans in addition to urging lawmakers to reconsider their approach to the culture wars and embrace basic fairness for gay Americans on the issue of marriage. He was considered an ally by pro-gay rights conservatives.
This isn't a unique feature of Perry's campaign. Republican candidates are increasingly relying on younger operatives who are far more sympathetic to gay rights. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour did during his exploratory run for the presidential nomination earlier this year. But Barbour never aired a blatantly anti-gay ad campaign that demonized one of the LGBT community's signature legislative achievements.
"It is the height of hypocrisy for Tony Fabrizio to have been a part of that," said Jimmy LaSalvia, co-founder and executive director of GOProud. "He has lined his pockets for years with money from the gay community to conduct polls to ostensibly help gay people in this country, and for him to be a part of this is the height of Washington hypocrisy. It is absolutely what is wrong with Washington. It is all about the payday for these people."
If Fabrizio found the ad repugnant and it aired over his objections, LaSalvia argued, he should have quit in protest. "Perry said in the ad that the service of tens of thousands of patriotic gay Americans is what's wrong in this country," LaSalvia said. "That is an outrageous and un-American statement."
Reached by email, Fabrizio confirmed that he was uncomfortable with the ad. But he said he was going to follow the advice he has given to candidates throughout his career: "If you start answering personal attacks, you are just rewarding the attacker."
Other sources familiar with the Perry campaign have said that Warfield is the one driving the sharp cultural conservative tones that have come from the candidate in recent days. In addition to coming out against openly gay service in the armed forces, the campaign has tested voter reaction against taxpayer-funded abortion and defunding Planned Parenthood.
Reached by phone, Ray Sullivan, a spokesman for the Perry campaign, called the internal disagreements and the external criticism over the ad "irrelevant."
"This ad is about the governor's faith, the governor's belief and his campaign, not about any one else," Sullivan said. "And the ad talks about what Perry views as this administration pushing a liberal agenda in places like the military, while at the same time praying at football games, moments of silence at school and celebrating Christmas in the public arena is frequently verboten and certainly not defended by this administration. The bottom line is that the ad is about Governor Perry's faith and his belief."
Sullivan noted that Perry has not formally come out for reinstating Don't Ask, Don't Tell, should he become president. His decision to criticize the open service of gays in the military, in short, was made from a personal, not a policy, perspective.
"It seems Governor Perry wants to be theocrat in chief, not commander in chief," said R. Clarke Cooper, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans.

This is not the Rick or Rick campaign I know. Tony Fabrizio is allegedly the top consultant and strategist on Rick's campaign. He is throwing the entire campaign under the bus. He is throwing Rick himself under the bus when Rick is already under fire for making what many believe is a really bad and controversial advertisement. The backlash was too much for Tony on this so he just looked out for himself instead of his candidate or his campaign he is allegedly the boss of. And who are these peeps anyway? Are they even looking out for Rick's reputation here, or are they just trying to make a buck? This is really strange... I have never seen such breakdown on Rick's team in decades of following his career.

Even if Tony is right about hating this commercial... and he is right... for this infighting to be aired this way is such a break from the entire history of Rick's team.

Rick's old team would never have let this happen. In the entire history of Rick's team I have never ever seen anything remotely like the public infighting in this article. Rick's team doesn't even leak things except on purpose, until now. They have always been so disciplined. So loyal. So on message. What happened there? Why did Rick's team throw out the playbook from 2010 and bring in these second rate national consultants who air their dirty laundry and fight with each other in public? This is just so bizarre.

This is really strange. Rick has run such a tight ship for so long... his peeps are always loyal to him... he just wins and wins and wins. Bash him for this or that but judging from his legislative accomplishments and results he is the most successful governor in modern American history.

He gets what he wants. He gets things done. I just hope these national consultants do not ruin Rick for the 2013 session...

Can someone fill me in on what in happening? I am feeling very out of the loop and even Rick's team I know from Texas won't talk to me about this issue.

Now we know... and I suspect much more will come out soon... so far we now know that the campaign team that did such a solid job in 2010 was not manning the controls throughout much of what we have seen in recent months...

As someone who believes that campaigns matter... this is really infuriating... especially since I gave the max dollar amount to Rick's 2012 hopes... only to see him end the campaign less than three weeks into 2012... I gave my money thinking I was giving to the Rick I've seen in action and his campaign team I have seen succeed over the years... instead I was giving to enrich consultant mercenaries based in Washington at Rick's expense... and make no mistake this campaign hurt Rick nationally as well as back home... in a big way. Had Rick kept his real team together they would never have let him tarnish his legacy and harm his future hopes the way he did...

Three points....

1. I hope Rick ditches Joe Allbaugh, Tony Fabrizio, Nelson Warfield, and all of the other Washington peeps like a bad habit. They are clearly to blame for the campaign failing. I hope blame is assigned properly...
2. I hope Rick can make amends with Dave Carney and his old team and bring them back into the fold, if they will have him again. They may not after being discarded so casually.
3. I hope Rick doesn't allow this to make him cynical about the conservative movement... it would be easy to turn his back on those who so cynically turned their back on him... but he is an important figure and I hope he remains committed to conservative causes rather than what is politically expedient... in this campaign he often veered toward what was politically expedient in the extreme short term...