Thursday, October 31, 2013

Cuccinelli is a Symptom of the GOP's Problems

Ken Cuccinelli and those who nominated him - especially the religious fanatics at The Family Foundation, a hate group in all but official designation as such - are not representative of mainstream Americans.  They represent a shrinking (and in my view, near mentally ill) element of American society that is in open rebellion against modernity, science, and equality for all citizens.  Their principal motivations are greed and hatred of others fueled by religious extremism and desperation that their white privilege is being eroded.  Despite all of this, the Republican Party has allowed these individuals to take over much of the Party grass roots and engage in behavior that has been near destructive for the nation's economy.  A piece in the National Journal looks at how Ken Cuccinelli reflects this sickness within the GOP.  Here are excerpts:

No, Ken Cuccinelli's expected defeat next week won't have any more bearing on the 2014 midterms than Chris Christie's anticipated landslide victory in solidly-Democratic New Jersey. But the divide that split the GOP asunder in Virginia is a powerful symptom of the problems that are hurting the party across the country.

Republicans are facing challenges winning over swing, suburban voters that were once a bulwark of the party's coalition. Cuccinelli has spent little time campaigning in vote-rich Northern Virginia, with his socially-conservative message failing to resonate with more-moderate voters.

Throughout his campaign, Cuccinelli has been catering to the party base, declining to criticize GOP tactics over the government shutdown and appearing with tea party leaders Ted Cruz and Rand Paul in the campaign's final month. His campaign appearance with Paul on Monday was at Liberty University, where the senator advocated a pro-life message to an evangelical audience.

"Republicans need to ask what's wrong with our business model here," said a frustrated Tom Davis, former Republican congressman from Northern Virginia and Cuccinelli supporter. "This should have been a slam dunk. Virginia almost always votes against the president's party ... All we needed was a mammal up there."

If Cuccinelli fails to engineer an unlikely comeback, it should signal that running an outspoken social conservative in a battleground state is a losing formula. But to the contrary, there are few signs that the message is getting through. If anything, the party's civil war – played out in Virginia between lieutenant governor Bill Bolling and Cuccinelli – is just beginning to heat up.

Consider: Seven of the 12 Republican senators up for re-election in 2014 are facing credible primary threats from the right. Few are expected to win, but most will pose more than a nuisance.

[W]ith the grassroots' energy focused on ousting their own, outside groups are paying less attention to the crop of vulnerable Democratic senators. The GOP campaign committees' fundraising is down, and American Crossroads is facing challenges replicating their fundraising success of elections past. Just like Cuccinelli has faced a huge financial disadvantage against deep-pocketed Terry McAuliffe, Republican candidates could find themselves outspent in pivotal races – thanks to the intraparty divide.

The Virginia governor's race also has highlighted how election rules designed to benefit conservatives have played an unheralded role in pushing the party rightward, costing them at the general-election ballot box. Most notable: The party's practice, in several states, of holding conventions instead of primaries to choose nominees, leaving the typically unrepresentative cross-section of single-issue activists to pick the Republican candidate.

In Virginia, Cuccinelli's allies bypassed the primary process to blunt intraparty opposition, a move that's contributed to his problems with unifying the party. Ironically, the outspoken conservative is belatedly trying to rally the base, something that would have been much easier had he engaged the broader GOP electorate in a primary campaign.

The bigger long-term fear, according to Republican strategists, is if the party divisions worsen, the tea party forces could emerge as a third party. Already McConnell's campaign has adopted a scorched-earth strategy not just against his primary opponent, but against the very tea party-oriented groups working to elect more conservative challengers to incumbents. The McConnell camp's goal is to exploit the groups' ideological inconsistencies, but those tactics are already inflaming intraparty tensions.

"The right could spring out very quickly and become their own entity—and then we're gone," said Davis. "These folks feel very empowered."

The so-called GOP establishment began creating this Frankenstein monster  as far back as a quarter century ago by welcoming Christofascists - who once had been viewed akin to lepers - into the local levels of the GOP.  Now the monster is out of control and frankly, I don't know how it can be killed. 

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