Will The Anti-Gay Platform Even Work in Virginia Anymore?

An article in The Atlantic conjectures that the GOP's anti-gay platform embraced by Ken Cuccinelli and his fellow extremists on the GOP ticket will no longer work in Virginia.  One can only hope that the premise is correct and that it is part of what leads to across the board losses for the whack jobs nominated by the Christofascist/Tea Party controlled GOP state convention earlier this year.  Here are column excerpts:

Ken Cuccinelli's election of strategy of running on his long-standing opposition to homosexuality might have worked in 2009, when Cuccinelli won the attorney general race in Virginia. But the country's shift on gay politics didn't miss the state, putting Cuccinelli at risk of losing key Republican donors and the governor's race.

The timing of his embrace of anti-gay rhetoric couldn't be much worse. Cuccinelli is running in a close race with Democrat Terry McAuliffe. Several polls, including one from Quinnipiac University last week, show McAuliffe with a slight lead. But in another metric, fundraising, McAuliffe is far ahead — thanks, in part, to reticence from past Republican donors to give to Cuccinelli. Bloomberg reports that Cuccinelli's adamant social conservative positions are a key factor in that antipathy. That attitude can be summarized in one quote.

“Mr. Cuccinelli’s very hard stance on some of the social issues is a concern for me,” said Virginia Beach developer Bruce L. Thompson, chief executive officer of Gold Key/PHR Hotels and Resorts, a financial backer of current Republican Governor Bob McDonnell who in May gave McAuliffe $25,000.

Or, perhaps two:

“I’m an employer in Virginia, and Cuccinelli terrifies me,” said Gary Shapiro, the president and CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association in Arlington, which represents 2,000 technology companies.

“To attract the best employees, you don’t want to have the most backward policies in the country,” Shapiro said, referring to Cuccinelli’s stands on issues including abortion and gay rights.

Cuccinelli has raised 40 percent less than McAuliffe to date.  

But that shortfall isn't inspiring him to rethink his campaign focus. As we reported last week, Cuccinelli has put a renewed emphasis on bolstering the state's anti-sodomy law. That position, which seeks to frame a law that bans consensual oral and anal sex between adults as a key tool for combatting child predators, was eviscerated by MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell in a widely-shared segment last Wednesday.

[T]hat same Quinnipiac poll which showed McAuliffe in the lead suggested that the trend has now fully reversed, with a majority of Virginians supporting gay marriage.

More alarmingly for Cuccinelli is how that support correlates with support for his opponent. Women support McAuliffe by a margin of 48 percent-to-32 percent, a 16-point spread. Woman are also much more likely to support same-sex marriage, approving of it by a 55 percent-to-39 percent margin. The difference there? Sixteen percentage points.