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...