The Moore Fiction: "Why I was wrong about Rossi."

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For the aficionados, the Moore Information Poll is, in my oh-so-humble opinion, the reason we lost the US Senate seat here in Washington State.

Moore, as we should all recall, is the pollster who polled on Rossi as a part of a Benton-commissioned poll back in February. Without asking, Moore released the findings from his poll that ultimately led to the abysmal and ultimately losing campaign by "When I get Around to it" Rossi.

Well, as I repeatedly said during the election, Rossi could not win. That, of course, makes me more accurate then Moore and many others in the GOP establishment, many who insisted that Rossi could sit it out until the last second, swoop in and take it away by what amounted to mailing in a US Senate campaign.

While that might have worked in some locations, it never stood a chance here.

Such a plan depended on a competent candidate, a well-funded campaign and a competent state organization.

Unfortunately for us, we had none of the three, and in what should have been a simple case of stealing candy from a baby, instead, we wound up in the middle of an armed robbery where we were the victims. Clearly, we brought a knife to a gun fight.

The Rossi campaign and the state GOP were out-thought, out-strategized, out-executed and generally just had their asses kicked.

They ran a poor campaign technically and strategically. Rossi's arrogance, which resulted in a colossal error concerning his 4 month or so hold-out on announcing, combined with his idiotic handling of the Didier debacle, doomed this campaign. You know, like I said it would??

I knew this and repeatedly stated this on this blog; many "experts" and apparently the entirety of the Bellevue Mafia disagreed.

And now, one of those most responsible for this debacle comes along and tried to spin like a top to explain the pre-destined destruction of what should have been a relatively easy senate pick up.

Murray had massive vulnerabilities. A consummate liar, expert at taking credit for crap she had nothing to do with, a con-artist who actually gets Veterans to believe she gives a damn about us, one of those self-admitted morons responsible for the utter disaster of Obamacare... so completely corrupt a blind man could see it in a minute.

And we couldn't get it done.

It was obvious that Rossi was going to fail when anyone reviewed his horrific fund-raising efforts where he managed to fail to raise as much as say, congressional candidate (and ultimate winner) Congressman-Elect Allen West (R-FL22) who out raised Rossi by a million two, for a CONGRESSIONAL race.

That was likely a direct result of his bizarre decision to wait to announce... shutting himself off from millions that might have otherwise made their way to Rossi in the early party of the campaign where HE could have used THAT money to define Murray... instead of allowing Murray several months to define Rossi... no matter how many lies or exaggerations she used to get it done.

Ignoring and insulting the Tea Party guaranteed that many of them would blow off a Rossi vote and not vote at all in his race, contrary to Chris Vance's clueless observation:

That said, please note the utterly clueless, moronic position put out by former WSRP Chair Chris "I took our caucuses from a tie to fitting into a phone booth" Vance:

"If Dino Rossi chooses to run, the Republican world will line up with Dino Rossi," said Vance. "And that will include the conservative base."

"There have always been Republican candidates who split the Republican base one way or the other. Dino was the one guy everybody loved."

It's THAT kind of arrogance and misreading of the people that were in large part responsible for this debacle.

Combine this with yet another weak and ultimately pathetic GOTV effort by parties from the state level down to county level, and this outcome was pre-ordained.

Once again, we had no minority outreach when it mattered. Once again, Murray had millions in earned media because she had the highest profile democrats in the country coming in and out in Western Washington like city buses. Once again, we got rolled because of a lack of infrastructure, a lack of responsiveness and a lack of understanding that continuing on without getting minority buy-in will turn the Washington GOP into a small footnote soon enough.

Moore doesn't think so. He talks about how Washington is becoming a deeper, darker, bluer state, and that's why Rossi lost.

It isn't of course. Because if that were the true reason behind the Rossi debacle, then certainly we'd have a democrat AG... right?

McKenna had the same landscape, if not even a worse version, and won in the midst of the democrat tsunami. How is it that McKenna could and did win, while Rossi lost... particularly when McKenna had to suffer under many of these same handicaps?

In the end, Rossi lost because of Rossi and the state GOP. As I put it to my clients:

Rossi pissed off a large segment of the base with his mishandling of Didier situation. No matter how well he did with the GOP, it wasn't good enough.

Rossi was a terrible candidate who did a bad job.

He lost. And it was primarily his fault. The end.

And no amount of spin by Moore or any other Rossi apologist can change that.
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