The Republican Party of Virginia's Deeping Denial

I've noted the full scale of the denial that is sweeping the Republican Party of Virginia in the wake of a cross the board losses in the 2013 statewide races, especially as it now appears that Mark Obenshain faces an impossible uphill battle to overturn Mark Herring's election as attorney general.  A leading conservative/GOP blog here in Virginia is Bearing Drift.  A perusal of the blog today demonstrates the lengths that Christofascists/Tea Partiers/Kool-Aid drinking Republicans are going to in an effort to face the reality that the majority of voters simply do not want their extremist candidates are peddling.  Surprisingly, one post at Bearing Drift did not embrace all of the RVP apologists, although he did ultimately fail to recognize that nominating far right crazies is the root of the RVP's problems.  Here are excerpts:

I’ve been reading various articles analyzing the Cuccinelli defeat and nearly every one of them missed the mark.  Here’s my view of why Ken lost and my debunking of many myths about this election, which a lot of people aren’t going to like.

KEN HAD NO MESSAGE

More than a year ago I spoke with Ken and was surprised that the rumors he was running for Governor were true.  Based on his record and his strong beliefs, I fully expected him to run for reelection and then the Senate in 2014 as his focus had always been on national issues and not so much on state issues.  I hung up the phone with no idea why he was running or what his message was (he mentioned something about Medicaid Fraud) and millions of dollars later, no one else seemed to know either until perhaps the final 72 hours.

KEN SPENT THE WHOLE CAMPAIGN TRYING TO WIN THE VOTES HE WASN’T GOING TO GET

Rather than firing up the base in a low-turnout election, he took his core constituency for granted and spent the entire campaign trying to “soften his image” and “inoculate” against future attacks.  None of this worked.  McAuliffe’s hard-hitting ads punched Ken right in the gut while Ken focused on a non-ideological message of ethics – the identical campaign Barry Goldwater ran in the 1964 general and with similar results.  Not once did Ken ever use the word “conservative” to describe himself nor the word “liberal” (or something similar) to describe McAuliffe.  Ken became the “right-wing nut” but never made McAuliffe the “left-wing nut.”

KEN TURNED HIS AG POSITION INTO A NEGATIVE

With three solid years as AG and a strong record of advocating for conservative causes and against the radical Obama Agenda, one would have thought this record would be a centerpiece of the Governor’s campaign, but instead he focused only on two things: freeing someone wrongfully imprisoned for rape and trying to defend the Virginia Sodomy Law.  Then, after taking the hit for trying to uphold a law no one understood, he never used the planned attack, that McAuliffe was pro-pedophilia (a hard sell to begin with), and instead had to deal with charges he wanted to ban oral sex.

The post then goes on to debunk a number of the popular excuses circulating throughout the Virginia GOP.   But then the author says this, which suggests he simply doesn't "get it either:"

BE WHO YOU ARE

Cuccinelli’s positive ads made him sound like a liberal Democrat and didn’t attract any.  It goes without saying that Ken did not cut into the McAuliffe vote with his ads.  Ken Cuccinelli spent seven years in the State Senate and four years as Attorney General building and winning with a strong conservative message that no one saw in 2013 til the final week.

MESSAGE FOR THE FUTURE

Be bold.  Stand up for what you believe.  Don’t worry about what the left says.  Never defend.  Always attack.  Keep control of the agenda.  Save your money for the end.

Cuccinelli did adopt a "be who you are" approach - he's an anti-women extremist, a spittle flecked homophobe, and he wants to monitor what happens in the privacy of one's home and bedroom - and that's what ultimately killed him.