Because Rick’s a smart guy. And his analysis of the recent House leadership fight is spot-on:
I can say this until I’m blue in the face, but winning this type of inside-the-Beltway fights means running the right campaign, not the one in your head. It means having a plan, because (also, until I’m blue in the face) a plan beats no plan, every time. It means telling a story that influences your actual targets, not the people who already love you. Sure, talk radio, conservative Twitter, and the activist groups revved themselves up, ran at the brick wall, and slammed into it hard enough to cause a concussion in the last 48 hours, but — as usual when it comes to the DC establishment — conservatives played the game wrong.
But I’ll go further. It’s not enough to have a plan: you have to have a goal-based strategy. Strategy is what you fall back on when your first plan goes pear-shaped, which it will. Plans always go pear-shaped. But if you know what you want to do – and, in this case, I mean something a bit more specific than the basic ‘get rid of John Boehner’ – then you can adapt and overcome, as the military folks like to say.