Are Virginia's 2013 Elections a Preview of 2014?

Many are suggesting that Virginia's statewide elections on November 5, 2013 could provide a preview of the 2014 mid-term elections and provide a glimpse at what level of voter wrath Republicans may reap for their efforts to sabotage the U.S. and world economies while seeking to blackmail President Obama and the Democrats.  To date, GOP insanity and thinly veiled racism seems to be hurting GOP efforts in Virginia and compounding the negative fallout from having the most extreme (and I would argue, certifiably insane) GOP ticket in Virginia's history.  A story by NBC News looks at the ongoing phenomenon.   Here are highlights:

Playing out just across the Potomac River from shutdown Washington, D.C., the Virginia governor's race has turned into a real-time test of Republican and Democratic positions in the congressional budget battle raging in the U.S. capital.

With polls indicating more public resentment toward Republicans than Democrats, the federal work stoppage directly affecting thousands of Virginia residents has forced Republican Ken Cuccinelli on the defensive while giving Democrat Terry McAuliffe an opening in a race that had been neck-and-neck for months.

Now, public and internal surveys show voter support has started breaking McAuliffe's way, with the Democrat leading by 8 percentage points in a Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday. The same poll showed that by a nearly 3-1 majority, Virginians opposed Congress shutting down the government in a fight over President Barack Obama's health care law.

The outcome of the Nov. 5 election in this swing-voting state could provide clues about how the issue will play in next November's House and Senate midterm elections - and give both parties a road map as they fight for control of Congress.

Earlier this month, Cuccinelli called on congressional Republicans to drop their insistence that Congress dismantle the health care law as a condition for reopening the government. Two days later, he appeared at a conservative Christian group's fundraiser that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz also attended.

McAuliffe has been stoking the notion - on the campaign trail and in TV ads blanketing the state - that Republicans are to blame for the shutdown and that Cuccinelli is no different from those whose demands helped trigger it. He's sought to link Cuccinelli to the tea party and paint him as too ideologically extreme for Virginia.

"I wouldn't even be in the same room with Ted Cruz with the damage he has brought to so many Virginia families,'' McAuliffe said. "And if I'd gone to the room, I'd tell him to stop using a government shutdown as an ideological bargaining chip.''

The arguments are salient in this state, which is home to many federal employees and receives the most military spending per capita in the nation.

Josh Schwerin, a senior aide to McAuliffe, said the shutdown played right into his candidate's key argument against Cuccinelli and the tea party: "They're more concerned about pushing their ideological agenda than solving problems.''