The got Marco Rubio virtually tied with Donald Trump for second place.

The Right to Rise strategy has been a variant on the old Army game of “if I can’t look good, I’ll make you look bad.” The idea being that Jeb Bush’s brand was so damaged that there was no way possible people would turn out to vote for him. But if Marco Rubio was burned to the ground the beneficiary would be Jeb Bush because the supporters of a candidate always gravitate to the campaign of anyone who attacks their guy in an egregious and unfair way.

To that end, Right To Rise chief, veteran GOP leech consultant Mike Murphy spend $14.9 million in Iowa. His spending far outstripped the other candidates.

If anything, Right to Rise proved there is an inverse relationship between Bush’s spending and his performance with voters:

Bush underperformed by a significant margin (okay, maybe that is an overstatement as Bush was usually within the Margin of Error of being at 0%) and Rubio outperformed the polls.

As my colleague, Joe Cunningham, points out, this comes to about $25K per vote.

The unfortunate fact here is that Murphy, who isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, will go on to ruin other future campaigns and Jeb Bush will get all the blame for the loss.