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In Defense of Mike Murphy…
It seems this week that Jebworld donors, surrogates and hangers-on can’t go two minutes without shouting to the press about their strange (and conspicuously relative) respect for Donald Trump, or whispering to them about their grave concerns over Bush consigliere Mike Murphy’s handling of Right to Rise, Jeb’s outside muscle.
Now leaving aside the dynamics of this temporary alliance with Trump, the grousing over Super PAC strategy is absurd on every level. Let us examine the telltale paragraph from Politico:
POLITICO interviewed nearly two dozen Right to Rise donors and Bush supporters, and all blamed Murphy for a super PAC strategy that has failed to boost their struggling candidate. Multiple advisers to the Right to Rise super PAC concede privately that the $40 million spent on positive ads aimed at telling Bush’s story has yielded no tangible dividends.
The report should have ended right there, or simply come to a completely different conclusion. If you are a frustrated Jeb supporter, the answer is staring you right in the face: when $40 million in positive media can’t move the needle in your candidate’s favor, perhaps the issue is not the Super PAC.
Otherwise, what is the argument? That Jeb, the son and brother of the past two GOP presidents, was inadequately packaged and sold to a primary electorate hungry for another Bush? That with better outside help he would have rocketed to the top of the polls? Color me skeptical.
Complaints of spendthrift habits also miss the mark — the latest grumbling centers around trollish billboards and miniature LCD screens loaded with a Jeb bio video. Are these moves gimmicky? Perhaps, but earned media more than justified the minimal expense. And when $40 million in feel-good advertising gets you nowhere, suddenly buzzworthy gimmicks look like the smarter play.
But it’s not just frustrated Jeb partisans heaping scorn on Murphy. He has become something of a maniacal supervillian to Rubio backers thanks to $20 million in negative advertising, and may soon be the scourge of the dozen Kasich supporters residing outside of Ohio or New Hampshire. To them I say: Mike Murphy is not your problem.
Now don’t get me wrong. I think the Reservoir Dogs scene unfolding in the Granite State right now is gratuitous, fratricidal, and ultimately futile. But Murphy and his team are pros, and they will play to the whistle. That means that as long as Jeb is in the race, they have a fiduciary duty to prosecute their campaign in such a way that it puts their candidate in the best position to win.
The problem of course, is that short of being the last man standing, Jeb cannot — and will not — be the nominee. But until he figures that out for himself, the R2R machine marches ever forward. Jeb’s path, such as it is, is to be the last man standing, and the only way to facilitate that is by snuffing out the competition, one by one.
So don’t blame Mike Murphy’s Super PAC strategy for Jeb’s troubles. Indulging this narrative merely insulates Jeb from the reality of this race and the consequences of his continued lurch toward electoral doom. Jeb needs to understand that the only person who can stop this train is him. He can’t fire Murphy — he can only fire himself.
If there’s anything to be critical about in hindsight, it’s the original, pre-firewall conception of Jeb’s campaign. The flawed conceit of his candidacy was that Bush Legacy × Wonkish Technocrat + $100 million = 2016 GOP nomination. Now that might have been a can’t-miss formula for success circa 2006, but a decade later it appeared shaky to anyone who looked closely.
So put away the pitchforks and let Murphy do his job. The Jeb train is going nowhere fast. $20 million later, Marco will be fine. As personal as friendly fire feels, if these hits didn’t come out in the primary, they would have been made in the general. The bigger issue is that this ongoing battle royale is wasting time that we as conservatives don’t have to stop Donald Trump. That is a problem — and only Jeb can fix it.
Published in General
You are welcome to waste as much time as you wish…defending Mike Murphy.
Mike Murphy is a disgrace and that fact that a contributor to this site supports him is a black eye to Ricochet and all involved.
You know what? Your points would make some small modicum of sense if the ads had been slightly more balanced. But $20 million out of $22 million on purely negative ad spending against one person with a solid conservative record who has not said bad things about you?
Sorry, that is a circular firing squad jeremiad fomented by a narcissistic moron who merely wants to get even because his cart was stuck, upsetting the coronation that was ready to let him provide $100m worth of media buys at his usual percentage rake-off rate.
This one is even worse than Santorum and Gingrich in 2012 going against everything they had believed before about capital formation and doing Obama’s work for him with the term “vulture capitalist”. My rule is that anyone who will sacrifice the party and conservative principles to push his personal ambition deserves every bit of opprobrium we can muster.
Mike Murphy is scum. Period. CoC notwithstanding.
If Murphy was doing his job, he’d take Jeb aside and say “You will not get the nomination. You know this. So you’re just flushing money down the toilet. And instead of bowing out like a gentleman, you risk wearing the label ‘bitter loser’ for the rest of your career because of your obsession with Rubio.”
But then Murphy would be out of a job.
And since Murphy will be blamed for Jeb’s failure to catch fire with the voters, Murphy knows that his days as a political mercenary are numbered. So in a way, I understand why he’s trying to milk as much cash out of Right to Rise as possible.
“No, no . . . keep going Jeb! The longer you stay in, the more likely you’ll get the nomination! Seriously! It’s obvious to everyone! And by the way, can I have an advance on next week’s paycheck?”
I’m no fan of Mike Murphy, but you can’t blame the ad agency who marketed Gigli for that movie’s failure. For better or worse, Right to Rise got the contract to sell dog food than no dogs want to eat.
True but the ad agency doesn’t have to take a contract from Purina and say that Iams is going to poison you….especially if Purina is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.
Now I’m a Marco Rubio fan, so its hard for me to not be somewhat miffed at Jeb!’s whole scorched earth Rubio gambit. Now I think ultimately it amounts to nothing. Rubio is young he has time etc. etc. But, the whole thing reeks of desperation to a level that is nauseating. It is one thing to lose, and another to lose without any grace. I get politics is a full contact sport, but still.
What is most telling though is how ultimately ineffective this whole move has been. Jeb! isn’t doing better, and it was not Rubio who took him down. It was Trump that stomped all over Jeb!’s dreams and it was Jeb! himself who turned himself into a joke. After all who came up with the idea of “Jeb!”. Now that is the probably his biggest problem, people can’t even write about him seriously much less take him seriously.
Mike Murphy’s only crime is tying to make lemonade out of beats, no Earthly power will prevail in that endeavor. I would be curious if he will come on to Ricochet after all of this is over and tell us what he thinks happened.
Given the laws controlling SuperPACs, that’s the one thing he’s legally bared from doing.
Well, then! Let the good times roll!
Indeed. The Super Pac is independent of the campaign. It can choose to switch can’t it? But on the other hand if you raise money from people on the idea you will support Jeb! and then decide to back Kasich isn’t that fraud? A lot of people are earning their bread through Right to Rise, why muck up a good thing by potentially opening up legal troubles. Better to stick with the nag you bet on and keep cashing those checks.
Liam, if you presented a defense of Lucifer here at Ricochet and then took a vote you might get a few out of sympathy. Not so much for Murphy.
There was a reason why he was NBC’s house Republican for years. Because A) his loyalty has always been a purchasable commodity and therefore has no qualms about stabbing fellow GOPers in the back and B) he hasn’t run a winning campaign since the 90’s.
He hacked his way through the Meg Whitman campaign to pursue his Hollywood dreams. Hollywood doesn’t seem to be interested and neither are we.
Not sure I agree with this. As I understand it, the PAC is not allowed to coordinate with the candidate or his campaign regarding the expenditure of the PAC’s funds, but why would that prevent Murphy from calling Jeb! and telling him it’s time to drop out? That’s not a coordination regarding the expenditure of funds.
It’s that kind of attitude that has earned Murphy the pariah status most of us here on Ricochet brand him with.
Much of Jeb’s troubles are Jeb’s to begin with, no question. However, Murphy’s wasting donor money in his wisdom that somehow tearing apart and attacking Rubio somehow elevates his own candidate or makes his own client look more presidential is more than a miscalculation, it smacks of delusion. His strategy is further besmirching the character of his own candidate but Murphy’s is apparently too insulated or arrogant to appreciate that.
Anyone who has taken the time to watch both candidates perform on the debate stage or at other public events can clearly see that Rubio is the more intelligent, articulate, dynamic and the aspirant with more presidential bearing. Transforming Jeb into a steaming locomotive isn’t having the effect that Murphy thinks it’s having. Perhaps some more exclamation marks are needed after Jeb’s name!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
By the way, Liam. Who are you?
Aside from the revenge Duane has proposed, the only motivation I can imagine for this strategy assumes that polls are incorrect about the popularity of Trump and Cruz. Perhaps the polls are grossly mistaken. Or perhaps the Bush team is human and so is susceptible to the willful blindness that occurs throughout history.
Either Murphy believes Rubio is the true leader in this “race” so far or Murphy believes he can supplant Rubio’s position with Bush long enough for Bush to survive until later primaries and a surprise surge. Whatever the case, the Bush team isn’t operating from the same premises as everybody else.
It occurred to me that Jeb! gave Hillary! an award of some sort. (I remember because the only award Hillary! should get is jail time.)
Perhaps if Hillary! gave Jeb! an award, it would even things out. Then neither of them would go anywhere.
Brian Watt: #14 “Much of Jeb’s troubles are Jeb’s to begin with, no question. However, Murphy’s wasting donor money in his wisdom that somehow tearing apart and attacking Rubio somehow elevates his own candidate or makes his own client look more presidential is more than a miscalculation, it smacks of delusion.”
I need a clue here. Is Jeb! working for Murphy, or is Murphy working for Jeb!? Or are they both working against Jeb!? Or is Murphy only in it for the $$ he’ll get from Jeb!?
Given Jeb!s position in the polls, I guess these questions are trivial pursuit.
Mr. Donovan is a lobbyist. Which explains a lot, I guess.
Non-coordinating Super PACs, the equivalent of Sasquatch. The Republicans and Democrats wink at each other and laugh at the rest of us.
Glad to read the piece. I follow you on Twitter–savvy comments–congrats. It strikes me as largely right. But the moral argument against him does, too.
Yeah, the guy got a job that can’t be done, but he’s still going to be judged for what he does. Maybe people can scare this kind of campaigning away, maybe they can’t, but I don’t see that this is going away.
If we’re being realistic about Mr. Murphy doing his job, we’re about ready to be realistic about people who hate the sort of job he does or the sort of man he is in doing the job.
He could step down. He could grab a lifeboat and let USS Jeb! sink on it’s own.
Instead, Murphy is shooting holes in hull to make it sink faster.
How do these people keep getting jobs?
It’s sad what eight years of Jesuit education can do to you.
Liam is a lobbyist for the construction industry. I’m curious where the construction industry stands on immigration reform. I have a feeling they are not big fans of closing the border or deporting the current illegals. He also used to work for Orrin Hatch, GOP squish-in-chief.
That said, I don’t disagree with the conclusion that Mr. Murphy is doing what he was hired to do, and that eliminating Rubio is the only possible path that Jeb has to the nomination. That Jeb is too stupid or deluded or convinced of his own indispensability is entirely Jeb’s fault and not Murphy’s. What’s more, the donors who gave money to Right to Rise are the next most culpable in enabling the foolish ambitions of Bush. Why they were so anxious to buy such a flawed candidate god only knows, but they did and have been the ones who gave fuel to this tire fire of a campaign. I would imagine that the donors to R2R would be rather upset that the money they gave away wasn’t being used as effectively as possible to consummate the criminally bad deal they tried to pull off.
Sure, Murphy could quit since he should have long since now seen the writing on the wall. But that wouldn’t stop what is happening to Rubio right now through R2R, someone else would just be taking the money for themselves that Murphy is now.
@ Vance Richards #23
They’re masters at taking credit for everything that goes right under their watch and avoiding blame for everything that goes wrong. The consultants deserve all the credit for the successes of 2010 and 2014, but 2006, 2008, and 2012 were utterly unwinnable scenarios in which no Republican could have ever possibly won.
Add to that, the guy hiring you thinks the exact same way you do. It’s obvious to all of them that Romney lost because he was pulled too far to the right on immigration.
Plus charts and graphs.
Whew. Tough audience.
Personally, I don’t mind you defending Mike Murphy as a means of bashing Jeb Bush. It’s Jeb’s complete lack of situational- and self-awareness I find so worthy of contempt.
However, the combination of Jeb’s inevitability as a failed candidate and the carpet bomb attacks on Rubio? That’s just inexcusable.
I can brush off the annoyance that is Mike Murphy. It’s Jeb Bush’s reputation that’s permanently tarnished.
Just curious, does any one here know how they ensure or monitor there isn’t coordination between PAC’s and campaigns?
People who had any character whatever would quit the SuperPAC and then go tell the truth. Remember that Murphy is not necessarily paid by time, he is a media consultant- so like an ad agency, he gets a percentage of ,media billings. In other words, the more he spends of the PAC cash, the bigger chunk he personally gets.
Thus, he would only pull the curtain on his complete waste of TV money if he had any class and was an honest man. Since he is not, he does best by finding something on which to blow the donor cash; since there are no more current presidential candidates in waiting in the Bush family (George P Bush needs to win a governorship first), the donors have already written the checks and the money can be wasted on petty revenge against someone who didn’t screw up his first run for office the way Jeb did. Had he won in 1994, he would have been primed in 2000; since he didn’t, he wasn’t,and blew his shot.
Bitter ambitious people when thwarted are ugly, whether named Bush or Murphy.
Also, the political class is a very tight knit club, of which Murphy is a senior member. Thus, they all hire each other and recommend each other for whatever jobs. What they lack in understanding human nature they make up for in how impressive they find credentials and “experience.”
And the last thing any of them want is for hiring criteria to switch from “experience” to results. If you worked for a winning campaign, all the insiders will pat you on the back for it. But if we allowed losing to be considered grounds to overlook somebody, someday they might actually be held accountable.