Remember when veteran political writer Stuart Rothenberg dubbed broker and U.S. Senate candidate Peter Schiff of Connecticut the "cockiest candidate" of the 2010 election cycle?
Well, Schiff is striking back in a lengthy op-ed piece published in tomorrow's edition of the Washington Times.
Rothenbeg produces the respected political journal, The Rothenberg Report, which Schiff dismisses as "a classic 'inside-the-beltway' publication targeted at those whose lives and livelihoods revolve around national politics."
More interesting than his squabble with Rotherberg are Schiff's observations about the American political system and where its headed. He was the quintessential outsider whose message of hard times stood in sharp contrast to the tightly scripted optimism espoused by most consultant-driven campaigns.
"Mr. Rothenberg knows how the game works, but what he didn't know then and still doesn't know is that the rules of the game are changing,'' Schiff said.
"Though I admit that my campaign skills were less than formidable, I managed to do far better than he would have predicted in his wildest dreams. Despite being matched against far better funded and better known rivals (outspent 10 to 1 in the Republican primary), hamstrung by a low 50 percent name recognition on Election Day in a state that largely missed the Tea Party flood, and ignored by both the local and national political media, I still managed to get more than 23 percent of the vote in a three-way Republican primary. In addition, I won the support of all three Connecticut Tea Party groups, most of the other grass-roots political organizations within the state and had more individual donors than both my opponents combined.
"Could it be that unpolished honesty has a place in politics?"