Remember how in the wake of Mitt Romney's 2012 loss to Barack Obama the far right of the Republican Party repeated the usual lie canard that the loss was the result of the GOP's failure to nominate sufficiently "conservative" - think insane - candidates? Well, the 2013 Virginia GOP statewide slate could not be any more conservative. In fact, the ticket is the dream ticket of the far right, religious extremists at The Family Foundation. So far every poll suggests that Virginians are not falling over themselves to support the GOP extremist ticket. As a column in the Washington Post suggests, ultimately the vote next Tuesday will be a referendum on Ken Cuccinelli and his extreme form of so-called conservatism. Here are column excerpts:
Here’s a statement by Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli II that I predict he will eventually disavow or at least regret: “We need people to know that Nov. 5 is a referendum in Virginia on Obamacare.”
Cuccinelli (R), who abhors the president’s health-care law, made the remark Monday at a Fairfax event in hopes of energizing party activists in the campaign’s final week.
But opinion polls are pointing to a comfortable victory, perhaps a landslide, for Democrat Terry McAuliffe. If that happens, do you think Cuccinelli will describe the outcome as an endorsement of the health plan he’s denounced as a reckless, unconstitutional violation of American liberty?
Neither do I.
But the Republican candidate is entirely correct in portraying the election as an important referendum. He just has the topic wrong.
The vote will be a plebiscite on Cuccinelli’s own, well-established brand of hard-line conservatism: a blend of tea party hostility to government and religious right opposition to abortion rights and gay equality.
Perhaps Cuccinelli will stage a miracle comeback before Tuesday’s election. But if the polls are correct, then the result ought to smash the cherished myth of the Republican right that it can win elections in Virginia if it just stops offering milquetoast moderates such as Mitt Romney.
Republicans nominated Cuccinelli as part of the most conservative statewide ticket in memory.
Virginia voters have noticed. They don’t like what they see.
Consider a striking bit of data from The Washington Post’s latest poll. Nearly 9 percent of likely Virginia voters share the following three characteristics: They voted for Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell four years ago. They plan to vote for McAuliffe this time. They view Cuccinelli as “too conservative.”
Cuccinelli has alienated past GOP voters partly through various actions in his job as attorney general, such as harassing a University of Virginia scientist with whom he disagreed about global warming. “I voted for him for AG, but some of the things that he’s done are absolutely appalling to me,” said Pat Sheldon, a retired Navy lieutenant commander who lives in Prince William County. “His going after the Virginia professor. . . . That to me is a personal vendetta, just because he doesn’t know about climate change.”
The recent federal government shutdown also has hurt Cuccinelli, by arousing ire against his tea party allies. “I don’t like the fact that he associated with people who are willing to shut the government down, which especially hurts the economy in this area,” said Jeff Hever, 36, of Leesburg, who works in the retail automobile business.
If Cuccinelli loses, then count on the Republican right to make three main excuses about why the outcome wasn’t “really” a rejection of its agenda. They’ll say they were massively outspent. That the government shutdown was unlucky timing. That they suffered collateral damage from the scandal over a businessman’s gifts to McDonnell.
Only one of the three rationalizations is valid. It’s true that McDonnell turned out to be a drag on the GOP ticket, instead of an advantage as expected.
By contrast, Cuccinelli has mainly himself to blame for his disadvantage in fundraising. Many Virginia businessmen who typically write big checks to the GOP supported McAuliffe, or sat on the sidelines, because they didn’t like Cuccinelli’s positions.
What is disturbing is the fact that even if Cuccinelli does goes down to defeat by a landside, the far right elements of the GOP who made him the nominee still will not get the message that people do not like what they and their candidates are peddling. These people will remain untethered from reality and will likely continue to destroy the GOP.
No comments:
Post a Comment