It seems these comments from Carly Fiorina this week caused quite a stir and one could imagine why.
When asked about her appeal to her Republican Party base, she said that Republicans want a winner. “The chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee has encouraged me to enter the race, reaffirming my belief that Chuck DeVore can not beat Barbara Boxer.”
Naturally this has Chuck DeVore throwing a fit, trying to get all the attention he can among conservatives to win their support in next year’s Republican primary for U.S. Senate.
In an e-mail Trevino sent to NRSC Communications Director Brian Walsh, and circulated to the press, he asked the committee to clarify “who is telling the truth on this matter:”
It’s no secret that many Republicans in Washington think Fiorina, who has name recognition, the capacity to self-fund and more centrist political tendencies, is a more promising general election candidate. But she has not performed any better against third-term Democrat Boxer than DeVore in recent polls — and unseating a Democratic incumbent in a state like California is no easy task, no matter who the GOP’s nominee is.
That does not, however, mean the NRSC has endorsed Fiorina, which Walsh reiterated in his reply e-mail to Trevino, also forwarded to reporters, as well as in comments to CQ Politics. [...]
But the distinction between endorsing and recruiting — one involves formally linking the party name to the candidate and lending material support, the other seeking out and encouraging candidates to run — bears less of a distinction out in the states than it does in Washington, D.C. And the party has generated a backlash among local activists in states like Florida and New Hampshire, as well as California, with the perception that it is meddling in primaries to the benefit of more moderate, but potentially more electable, candidates.
DeVore’s team is already trying to garner anti-establishment support from the conservative activist base by painting the NRSC as fully behind Fiorina’s potential candidacy.
“Since then, it has become crystal clear that the NRSC is 100 percent behind Fiorina’s candidacy, raising the question of whether there is pragmatic utility in further outreach to them. If and when the NRSC wants to work with us, we await them with open arms,” Trevino told CQ Politics in an e-mail.
DeVore, meanwhile, told CNN on Wednesday that “he has not made any effort to meet with national Republican officials because he knows who the NRSC is supporting, and doesn’t want to provide them with ‘valuable intelligence that they would simply pass on to Carly Fiorina.’”
So to summarize, DeVore’s message going forward is that far-right conservative John Cornyn and his staff are double agents on behalf of Carly Fiorina and are involved in a conspiracy to betray the cause of true conservatism in the image and likeness of Chuck DeVore.
A message tailor-made to a bunch of people that carry tea bags around with them and seek to impeach Barack Obama and want to “keep government to get out of my Medicare!“