My birth state too, but I see NOVA to VA as North Ireland to Ireland. It’s an entrenched lobbyist, bureaucrat and federal contractor class whose principle industry is government.
In addition to McAuliff’s buying the governor’s mansion there was the libertarian distraction that siphoned off the winning margin from Ken.
All in all you are correct but the lesson should be learned that to win in VA one needs to attract the entrenched NOVA teat suckers, and then decimate them in a future election cycle to be rid of their influence. The way to do that is to buy their leaders and talk government largess possibility to their coffers and paychecks. But of course there is the problem of keeping the conservative base support while talking out of both sides of one’s mouth. It’s not impossible and the good news it needs to be done only once as long as the NOVA class is picked up and moved out or retrained.
It is not burdensome to one’s own conscience when envisioning a luring of criminal accomplices with sugar money into a trap where a gate can be slammed behind them and locked, just as long as the conservative base in onboard.
But it’s difficult to keep a poker hand hidden in the public arena.
This is why we have Cantor’s in DC. They get in office and cave to the other side so the entrenched interests live to fight another day. The House republicans should have stood firm on defunding Obamacare allowing for the pigs at the trough to go on feeding under other budget authorities until slaughtering time.
The path Ken needed to take was one where he could assure the NOVA trough would be stocked with grub but would play his heart to the patriots in VA to continue working to rid the countryside of freedom robbing Obamacare. Easier said than done and I think he tried something along this line. Whichever it was played out it was necessary that the true conservatives in VA needed to understand the play and then once successful be committed to seeing Ted Cruz in the White House in 2016 where the gauntlet will be laid down on the public union leaches.
I have so little sympathy for government trough feeders. I could support retraining to non-government dependent work so that they can keep their bloated mortgages and suburban outposts with the SUV and green car in the driveways. But it is nevertheless sickening to see this class put the likes of McAuliff over the top just so they can stay fat. I know it’s difficult to walk away from a good feeding ground into an unknown future by voting against your livelihood. But at some point this can no longer stand and something must be done. That something would be a warning to get ready, you got one or two years then you’re on your own!
DC and its spillover into MD and VA has been a robust growth industry for years and years now until the effort by responsible patriots to defund Obamacare was twisted by the press of the DC class and the MSM as an effort to shutdown the government which it was not. This lie is what empowered the NOVA class to get McAwful in power along with driving independents to the libertarian.
It would be interesting to hear from Ken what he would do differently from what was done.
Good comparison. I grew up in S.E. VA and it WAS as different from NOVA as it could be, but no longer, and I can tell you I still go back to the beach every year to visit family,there are so many northerners there fleeing what they messed up in their home states I hardly recognize it anymore.