Divisions in the Virginia GOP Intensify

In the wake of Ken Cuccinelli's loss on Tuesday, watching the Virginia GOP's circular firing squad is seemingly going to be most entertaining to watch.  Already it is clear that the Kool-Aid drinkers of the Party's Christofascist/Tea Party base will never concede that it was their nomination of extremists (and in the case of "Bishop" Jackson, a total lunatic) that lies at the root of the GOP defeat.  Hence, they will blame anyone and everyone other than themselves.  Meanwhile, the so-called GOP establishment types show little willingness to take blame for the doings of the far right loons.  The same holds true of the GOP donor class.  They will soon learn - if they haven't already - that you cannot reason with crazy people.  Their only real solution is to sit out several election cycles and allow the Christofascists/Tea Party to run the GOP into the ground before launching a coup to oust the "godly Christian" crowd and the white supremacist elements of the base. A piece in the Washington Post looks at the fray.  Here are highlights:

If lessons emerged from Tuesday’s vote, they were almost instantly lost in the volley of finger-pointing that began even before the polls closed. Republican Ken Cuccinelli II’s narrow loss, despite what opinion surveys had consistently called a comfortable lead for McAuliffe, left the candidate’s camp accusing national party organizations of abandoning their man in the closest major race in the nation this year.

Party officials said it was Cuccinelli who had failed to raise money from mainstream Republican sources skeptical of his hard-line rhetoric and uncompromising conservatism.

“The lesson is that a party divided is going to lose,” said Pete Snyder, a Northern Virginia technology entrepreneur who served as Cuccinelli’s finance chairman. “The Democrats weren’t happy with their candidate, but they were united. Ken Cuccinelli had to deal with Melrose Place.”

“A resounding defeat would have allowed the business wing of the Republican Party to make the case against the social conservative wing that we need to moderate our appeal,” Kidd said. “But with this result, the tea party wing gets the energy to say, ‘Well, we didn’t do as badly as you said we would.’ ”

Tea party activists indeed made that case, complaining that this was only the latest example of national GOP leaders betraying the grass roots.

Cuccinelli’s chief strategist, Chris LaCivita, said the Republican National Committee and other party groups had doomed the campaign by pulling back on their support when polls in early October showed the candidate losing badly. 

Even though Virginia’s population continues to grow more ethnically mixed, urban and transient, the state remains so evenly divided politically that the people who run campaigns often conclude that the path to victory lies in rallying their party’s core voters rather than reaching out to moderates.

The RNC warned after the 2012 election that Republicans could win only if they found a way to “in fact and deed be inclusive and welcoming” to nonwhites, immigrants and young voters. “If we are not,” an RNC report said, “we will limit our ability to attract young people and others, including many women, who agree with us on some but not all issues.”

Tuesday’s exit polls suggest that Republicans have made little or no headway in appealing to nonwhites or single voters.

Some Republicans who steered clear of Cuccinelli during the campaign said privately that they had hoped for a clear loss to purge the party of its tea party flank and restore power to its more business-oriented, socially moderate core.

Cuccinelli grew incensed by what he perceived as disloyalty as he found himself unable to pay for TV ads to counter the Democrats’ relentless negative ad campaign, according to two Republican insiders who spoke on the condition of anonymity about internal campaign conversations. That anger flowed into election night, when Cuccinelli refused to make the traditional congratulatory phone call to McAuliffe.

Despite Cuccinelli’s personal appeals to RGA chairman Bobby Jindal (La.) and RNC chairman Reince Priebus, the RGA decided against any major new investment, two Republicans said.  

As I said, it will make for interesting spectator sport.