Pastor Joe Fuiten, who publicly dissented with fellow religious conservatives over whether to try to get Referendum 71 on the ballot, has a few choice words to say about its defeat -- mostly along the lines of "I told you so," with a dose of sniping at the Reject 71 leaders.

In his regular "Frankly Fuiten" e-mail sent out this morning, he says the Reject 71 campaign failed because it didn't reach out beyond churches, didn't raise enough money, and leaders had no game plan.

"Maybe the main lesson to be learned from our loss is to question those who want to lead us into similar efforts in the future," Fuiten writes in the e-mail. "If you are going to claim to be the leader, you have to actually have a strategy for victory."

He takes aim at what he calls the Reject 71 leaders' spin that the campaign energized 200,000 conservative Christians statewide. "Personally, I wonder why those 200,000 didn't get financially behind the campagn we just finished. That mighty army gave about sixty cents per person to the campaign."

Focus on the Family and Family Policy Institute (of which, by the way, Fuiten is a board member), gave the most money to the effort, Fuiten says.

Fuiten also takes direct digs at his one-time ally Gary Randall, head of the Faith and Freedom organization and a leader in the Reject 71 campaign.

"Because of the lack of strategic planning on our side of the R-71 campaign, I called our side a 'leaderless army,'" Fuiten wrote in his e-mail. "Gary Randall objected to that. Maybe he was right. When you consider how little money was put into this effort by Randall's organization, maybe it should have been an armyless leader."

Furthermore, Fuiten wrote: "A great deal of effort went into claiming God's support. From the beginning, Randall claimed divine blessing and approval. ... Please pardon me for asking the obvious, did God change his mind or was the claim of divine blessing a bit overstated?"

Of course, Randall has gotten in his digs at Fuiten over the past few months as well, in his Faith and Freedom e-mails.

When Ref. 71 made the ballot, Randall wrote: "We were not dissuaded by those who referred to us as a 'leaderless army' predicting failure or those who had more money and attempted to keep R-71 off the ballot."

After the election, Randall wrote: "The relentless public attempt to undermine R-71 from within the faith community was not expected. We knew there would be those who would not support our efforts, but had no idea it would be taken to that level. We have learned from that experience."