The boyfriend and I will be attending a fundraiser for Terry McAuliffe later this week. Am I in love with McAuliffe and all of his political positions? Not in the least. However, his victory in November is critical because his opponent, Ken "Kookinelli" Cuccinelli is, in my view, certifiably insane and a dangerous extremist. While more judicious in many of his public statements, Kookinelli is cut out of the same cloth as Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock who dragged the GOP down to defeat in the Missouri and Indiana Senate contests last November. Thankfully, Kookinelli has authored a book that helps to document both Kookinelli's lunacy and extremism. A piece in the Washington Post looks at Kookinelli and his manifesto. Here are highlights:
Ken Cuccinelli, Virginia’s attorney general, Republican candidate for governor and tea party hero, is a man under siege — and that’s just the way he likes it.
He has become a target of ridicule from pundits on the right; in February, for instance, Joe Scarborough called him “certifiable when it comes to mainstream political thought.” He is being challenged in his own state, where a pair of Northern Virginia business leaders recently berated him as out of touch. Things have gotten so bad that Republican Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling has refused to endorse Cuccinelli, even though he decided not to launch an independent bid against him.
A good bit of Cuccinelli’s predicament comes from the release of his book, “The Last Line of Defense,” an extended attack on what he sees as the criminal overreach of the Obama administration — a group he unsubtly describes in the title of Chapter 1 as “The Biggest Set of Lawbreakers in America.” Moderate Republicans worry that “The Last Line of Defense” places Cuccinelli out of the mainstream while handing Democrats endless fodder to use against him. It’s never a good sign when your opponents hold a news conference, as Democrats in Richmond did, to take turns reading aloud from your book.
He was tea party long before the tea party existed. And in “Last Line,” he makes clear that he aims to be tea party well after the tea party, too.
“Last Line” is not a particularly welcoming book. Those who don’t embrace Cuccinelli’s point of view are dismissed as naive or, as he puts it, “asleep.” It reads a little like talk radio sounds — loud, one-sided and at wit’s end. It is more a justification for what Cuccinelli has done than an invitation to join the cause.
As Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R), an equally fervent critic of the Affordable Care Act, put it in February: “It doesn’t matter what I believe. The Supreme Court made its decision. We had an election in the fall, and the public made their decision. Now the president’s health-care law is the law.” For Cuccinelli, however, what he believes is all that matters . . . .
Politically, Cuccinelli has been criticized for echoing Mitt Romney’s assertion that 47 percent of Americans feel entitled to government giveaways. In one passage, he writes of “bad politicians,” saying: “One of their favorite ways to increase their power is by creating programs that dispense subsidized government benefits, such as Medicare, Social Security, and outright welfare (Medicaid, food stamps, subsidized housing and the like).
Cuccinelli is running this time in a world that has changed considerably since the tea party fervor of his last election. The convincing victories of Obama and other Democrats last year have prompted some Republicans to rethink their hard-line positions. In Virginia, Cuccinelli’s party has shifted, too. Last month, a bipartisan group of lawmakers backed a transportation plan by Republican Gov. Robert McDonnell that raises the sales tax and other levies. The plan includes a regional tax increasethat looks an awful lot like the one Cuccinelli rose to oppose all those years ago.
While the column doesn't mention gays, Kookinelli is virulently anti-gay and holds views identical to those of the infamous Del. Bob Marshall who has stated that he would like to drive all gays from Virginia. Extremists doesn't begin to describe Cuccinelli who has a confidence in his own frightening views that reminds me of at least two figures from history: Hitler and Stalin.
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