Alas, all too true
Disaster can bring benefits. Maybe the 2012 debacle will start breaking the stranglehold on the GOP by the Campaign Consultant incubus
RedState has made a good start with Campaign Sources: The Romney Campaign was a Consultant Con Job By Ben Howe November 9th 2012
…the truth is the consultants essentially used the Romney campaign as a money making scheme, forcing employees to spin false data as truth in order to paint a rosy picture of a successful campaign as a form of job security.
Zac Moffatt, Digital Director for the Romney campaign, was specifically named as having “built a nest egg for himself and co-founder of Targeted Victory, Mike Beach,”…
According to all the sources I spoke to, the breakdown of the campaign can be traced to the primaries.One source saying “they looked at the guy who could raise the most money in history as a ride” adding that “money no longer matters. That’s the problem,” also referring to the campaign overall as “the biggest political flim flam of all time.”
The immediate trigger for this essay was the catastrophic Election Day collapse of the Romney vote mobilization software Project ORCA, authoritatively discussed here.
GOP Campaign Consultants are about as destructive to their clients as divorce lawyers. As Peter Brimelow noted in July, Richard Viguerie produced a blistering attack on this problem: DC Consultants Stealing the Soul of the GOP It deserves re reading in the light of Tuesday’s disaster:
It says a lot about the caliber of advice Mitt Romney is getting that in the midst of the worst economy since the Great Depression of the 1930s, he can do no better than tie President Barack Obama in most national polls…
A big part of the problem is, in a word, consultants. Especially the small coterie of Washington, DC based insiders that have come to dominate Republican political strategy and ad making over the past decade…
While the ignorance and establishment bias of Washington’s Republican insiders is damaging, what is truly destructive is their greed and the conflicts of interest that have become so commonplace among this elite fraternity.
There were clear signs in the late summer that the Romney campaign had been perverted by fee-maximizing operatives. Steve Sailer’s back-of-envelope calculations suggest Karl Rove may have taken $45 million out of the election! (Will the MSM ever ask Rove?)
Unfortunately at the end of the day this raises serious questions about Romney. He allowed himself to be commandeered by untalented hacks and fools and permitted himself – and the Cause - to be ruined. (Rather like Michelle Bachmann)
Could it be that his role at Bain Capital was just that of fund-raising, with the actual business decisions being made by others?
