Sorry I have been away for a while. I had a little work to do.
There has been quite a bit written about the recent misfortunes of the McCain Campaign, so I will not add a tremendous amount. As I had written earlier, 10 million in fundraising should have been enough to keep him in the game. I had not, however, a clue as to his burn rate.
It is my belief that McCain's flaw was in moving from "the girl who brung him" and attempting to recreate what worked for Bush in 2000. McCain's insurgent 2000 campaign was far more suited to him and his strengths. Releasing his new team and moving back to his old team should have happened long before now.
Iowa is a good example. A great portion of McCain's money was spent in Iowa where McCain did not campaign eight years ago. The same reasons that made Iowa a bad fit for McCain eight years ago still applied today, especially his lack of support for ethanol. Skip it and spend in New Hampshire and South Carolina. Romney dumped money into New Hampshire and it has paid off for him. I believe McCain could have got more from a smaller sum there if he hadn't been tempted by spending big on Iowa. Then he should have spent most of the rest in South Carolina. That's it. He wins those two states, his name recognition gets him the nomination, barring outside events. This probably would have been true in 2008 as well, for that matter.
And it goes without saying that recent legislative and world events harmed McCain. Thus the reason why very few sitting senators become president. Had McCain spent less on Bush staffers, however, he may have been able to better navigate these pitfalls.
Eight years should have been enough to find more Mike Hellons and other grassroots level activists to rely on rather than collecting higher priced Bush campaign hood ornaments. This approach would have certainly closed the feedback loop a little tighter as well.
All that being said, the aspect that I wonder about is if McCain moving back to his roots doesn't allow him to move back into contention, does that put Arizona back into play? From a state party standpoint that could be a good thing as it will assure a lot more candidate presence and spending which would increase state and state candidate coffers.
It should be interesting.
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4 comments:
It does seem like just about everything that could go wrong for McCain have. Mind you, a lot of that is his fault for some poor decisions, but he hasn't had much help from outside events either.
Framer- you can't be serious as it relates to your last paragraph....
The State party has been taken over by aliens and I do not mean illegal-
anonymous,
Such childish comments do nothing to further the debate. Please save them for another blog.
I think the right has advertently cooked one of their own...and most principled...members of their party in McCain. Imagine the howling that will occur when they get Giuliani over there. McCain is far more conservative and has twice the experience. All this because he shut down the money laundering to conservative groups with McCain-Feingold.
Well...when Giuliani wins...get back to me.
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