Virginia Republican Party is Cash-Strapped - Insanity Carries a Price

Apparently the Republican Party of Virginia's embrace of ignorance, religious extremism and general insanity is catching up with it financially.  As the Party Central Committee meets in Richmond, the financial picture is bleak in the wake of a general election cycle in 2013 that saw the Virginia GOP lose every statewide office.  Perhaps the crazies of the Christofascist/Tea Party base at last year's state convention should have spent more time thinking about what the nomination of three extremists might have in the longer term.  Big business saw Cuccinelli as too extreme and now, with the GOP's efforts to block Medicaid expansion, chambers of commerce and the state's hospital associations now oppose the GOP's "party of no" posture.  The Virginian Pilot looks at the situation.  Here are excerpts:

When the Virginia Republican Party's governing body meets today in Richmond, many members for the first time could hear some unsettling news: Party finances are distressed.

The cash-strapped state GOP has shed staff and is scrambling to raise money amid internal strife after November's crushing elections left the GOP without any statewide officeholders. The party faces the loss of its executive director and finance director, who oversaw fundraising.

Varying reasons have been given for the upheaval - personal exhaustion and personality clashes are primary ones - but several party sources say money is part of the problem.

State records show that the GOP closed the year with less than $21,000 in the bank. Federal Election Commission records painted a similarly bleak picture: less than $17,000 available in its federal account.

At the same time, the Virginia Democratic Party had nearly $150,000 in its state account and about $92,000 in its federal coffers.

Republican Party officials publicly downplay the financial situation. They say it's merely a reflection of an elongated 2013 election season that stretched into this year because of the recount in the attorney general's race and several legislative special elections.

Pat Mullins revealed the financial trouble on a recent "emergency conference call" with select party elders, telling those on the call that the party is "a month behind" on its bills, according to sources who participated.

Several factors contribute to the party's money woes.

Losing all three statewide races has left the party without a standard-bearer, a "tent pole around which all the donor giving" can rally, noted Albemarle County Del. Rob Bell, the party's finance chairman.

Running insider conventions to nominate candidates rather than holding taxpayer-funded primary elections costs the party. That remains a divisive issue between warring factions: conservatives who took over in 2012 and the establishment wing trying to regain control.

Other inhibitors to party fundraising efforts include the rise of third-party political committees as competitors for campaign cash; donors can anonymously give to some groups.

Perhaps the biggest factor, though, is donor disillusionment. . . . "This is one of the consequences of the party being taken over by these extreme voices," said one longtime party official, adding that business donors will be scarce "until they believe leadership of the party... gets back to a more mainstream place."

Frankly, I see little chance of the Virginia GOP returning to a mainstream mindset any time soon.  Indeed, moderates continue to flee the GOP and the strangle hold of the Christofascists and Tea Party therefore continues to worsen.