Posted on 11/11/2013 4:09:37 AM PST by Kaslin
Politics is in the eye of the beholder.
Post-mortems now gushing forth about why Ken Cuccinelli, conservative Republican candidate for governor in Virginia, lost to Democrat Terry McAuliffe, a business-as-usual political retread from the Clinton crowd, tell us more about who produces this punditry than what reality actually might be.
We’re hearing that the Tea Party killed Cuccinelli (according to the Wall Street Journal editorial page they “stabbed him in the back”) with the government shutdown and that, once again, a socially conservative Republican candidate has shown he can’t win the votes of women.
What I see is very different. What I see is a Republican Party that still has not learned the necessary lessons to reverse setbacks of recent years.
It was not the Tea Party that stabbed Ken Cuccinelli in the back but the establishment of his own party. Once a real conservative candidate gets nominated, the party loses interest. And because they lose interest, they hold back funds, thus assuring their own prediction that this candidate can’t win.
Cuccinelli lagged in total funding by $14 million. In the early months of the campaign, because of lack of funding, he was brutally attacked in ads that went unanswered.
Regarding the shutdown – supposedly of disproportionate impact because so many Northern Virginians work for the federal government – Cuccinelli was well behind in the polls for months before the shutdown even occurred. Again, largely because of unanswered attack ads.
The Republican establishment can’t seem to grasp that they would have helped their cause by embracing the de-fund ObamaCare efforts of Tea Partiers Ted Cruz and Mike Lee.
Every day Americans see more clearly what a disaster ObamaCare – the Affordable Care Act – is. If Republican leadership would have unified clearly around the efforts of Cruz and Lee, and the American people got a clear picture of Republican unity and commitment to slay the ObamaCare monster, it would have helped the party and Cuccinelli.
It is also clear that Republicans still haven’t gotten the message about race and the changing demographics of the country.
When Barack Obama won the presidency in 2012 while winning just 38 percent of the white vote, Republicans supposedly learned something.
Those lessons appear to have been lost in Virginia.
Virginia has a large black population, 50 percent higher than the national average. Terry McAuliffe got 90% of the black vote, as did Creigh Deeds, the Democratic candidate for governor in Virginia in 2009.
The difference is that in this election blacks constituted 20 percent of the overall vote, up four points from 16 percent in 2009. So the impact of the black vote grew in 2013.
That increase of four points of the black vote as a percentage of the total vote could have made the difference alone, given that Cuccinelli lost by 2.5 points.
The Republican candidate for Lt. Governor was a no-nonsense black pastor, graduate of Harvard Law School, E.W. Jackson.
This would have been a classic opportunity for the Republican Party to aggressively visit black churches, talk about the conservative religious values that these black Americans care so dearly about, and explain the deep damage that welfare state policies and secular humanism embraced by Democrats has done in black communities. Where were they?
Then there is the claim that conservative candidates can’t attract women.
Not true. It’s not about gender but about marriage.
Cuccinelli captured the votes of both married men (50 percent) and married women (51 percent). It was the unmarried vote that McAuliffe captured (51 percent single men, 67 percent single women).
Republicans have not failed in recent years as result of being too bold or too conservative.
They have failed due to lack of clarity, conviction and courage.
The defeat of Ken Cuccinelli in Virginia is not an encouraging sign that Republicans have learned their lessons.
The guy was a fake libertarian funded by the demorats.
Agreed
“IMHO this internal GOP civil war may cost their ability to win POTUS in 2016 and 2020.”
I agree. And I’d like to play to win but my problem is that I sucked it up and supported their clown (Romney) last time, but they did not support my guy this time (Cuccinelli.)
Black precincts are known for their voter fraud. The election was stolen.
Pray America is Waking Up
For sure...if it’s NJFatboy vs Hillary I’m writing in Putin!
Nearly every vote for the libertarian would of gone to Cuccinelli
Not according to the exit polling data. Seeing that the Democrat candidate couldn't even achieve a majority in the state is however a good sign.
As far as the LIVs are concerned all of the recent “mass shootings” were done by Tea Partiers - they never find out that the shooters were actually registered Democrats and left-wing freaks...
They have been so slandered in the media that is is amazing they survive at all.
I'm not convinced the GO-Pee even wants to win the presidency any more.
No. The party pulled funds from Cuch a month before election day. Cuch lost a very close race.
If Cuch was funded correctly he would have most likely won inspite of the Libertarian candidate..
BTW you should do something about your "umm" speech impediment.
Not according to the exit polling data. Seeing that the Democrat candidate couldn’t even achieve a majority in the state is however a good sign.
...it’s true that the libertarian pulled from Mcauliffe as well, but Cuccinelli couldn’t afford to lose any votes, so that hurt...
...the writer states that married women went for Cuccinelli...a better metric would be to break up the married vote by age grouping...since couples rarely vote against each other, I’m guessing that older men and their wives drove that result...unfortunately northern Virginia is fast becoming yuppie heaven (just look at Rte 15 from Lucketts to Gainesville on a fall Saturday and see all the #@$%&*!soccer games, yuppiedom on display)and we see the electoral future for the state...singles and blacks also will play an increasing role...
...Virginia is experiencing its last ride with the Old Guard conservatives, at least in high profile elections...not beating the worn out, mealy mouthed hack McAuliffe suffering from Obamacare disease is not a good sign for the future...
Too true...
I’m in a “majority minority” district in my county in VA (thank you Voting Rights Act) and my black neighbors are nice, polite, hard working (most of them) and church going...
Yet they vote dim to a man every election....so sad.
At this point, I could care less about the Republicans. To follow Ronaldus Magnus, I didn’t leave the Republican Party, they left ME.
Since early this year, I’ve considered myself an Independent Conservative.
Hell, if Christie gets the nod in 2016. . . I’m not even going to bother to vote. . .
I think a lot of conservatives got pissed at the VA GOP when they gave them the choice of Romney or Ron Paul to vote for in the last pres. election. I recall lots of folks saying ‘I will never vote/support GOP again!’ over it. Maybe some of them meant it.
FReegards
I meant the GOP primary, not the pres. election. D’oh.
Freegards
If Cuch was funded correctly he would have most likely won inspite of the Libertarian candidate..
...all the funding in the world wasn’t going to win Fairfax County, which is bleeding away pubbie votes like a burst aorta...and which, in addition to being politically active, provided a massive block of votes to the election...
Hell, if Christie gets the nod in 2016. . . I’m not even going to bother to vote. . .
...Hillary Clinton will send you effusive personal thanks for your half-vote...
And Cuccinelli had a hand in that fiasco, making sure that Romney got the VA delegates. You have to wonder whether Cuccinelli would have drifted left once in office in the true RINO tradition.
Fake (L) taking votes from Cuccinelli?
As a (L), he didn’t help himself with the alternative gas tax scheme (GPS tracking), but he received funding (legally)....does that make any difference in any party? Did the same benefactor hedge their bets by donating to the other part(y/ies)?
Now, you wish to place blame, put it on the party that couldn’t make the message resounding enough to bring out 3x as many people that stayed home (FWIR, there were 8.8M eligible voters, only 2.2 came out).
Nearly every vote for the libertarian would of gone to Cuccinelli”
I'm not sure I buy your premise; libertarians are an odd group, and McAuliffe’s position on abortion, alone, would have appealed to many of them. In any case, there is nothing Republicans can do about the fact that libertarians are going to be on state-wide ballots in Virginia.
A few thousand “lost” ballots in the trunk of a car will do that.
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