It is Friday evening and security and HR goons are on the move at Bush campaign headquarters handing our cardboard boxes and pink slips. Among the lucky recipients is Christine Ciccone, the Bush campaign’s Chief Operating Officer.

The highest-ranking official known to lose her job in Jeb Bush’s flagging campaign is Christine Ciccone, the campaign’s chief operating officer.

News of Ms. Ciccone’s departure comes a week after the Bush campaign announced a re-organization that it said would reduce payroll by 40%. Ms. Ciccone served as Mr. Bush’s chief operating officer, effectively an office administrator responsible for logistics.

…

Ms. Ciccone was paid roughly $12,000 a month, the equivalent of a $144,000 annual salary, according to the campaign’s most recent Federal Election Commission filling. Reached by phone Friday, Ms. Ciccone said “I’ve got no comment. I’ve just got to go.”

Ms. Ciccone came to the campaign with political roots in the Bush family. She worked in President George W. Bush’s White House, serving as a legislative liaison to the Senate. Before working for the Jeb Bush campaign, she worked as a lobbyist at Sphere, a top Washington consulting firm.

Ordinarily, one would dismiss such a staff move but the odor of flopsweat hangs so heavily about the Bush campaign that this seems to have only one meaning: they simply can’t afford to keep her on the payroll. When your Unique Selling Proposition is “I’m Inevitable” you can’t start firing senior staff who are long time family loyalists. Because then it is obvious that you are selling a lie.

Even though he’s a leftwing nutball, I’m crediting @kombiz with the image.