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...