Randy Forbes' Dishonest Political Ad

German rescuer from the humanitarian organisation Sea-Watch holds a drowned migrant baby, off the Libyan cost May 27, 2016. The baby, who appears to be no more than a year old, was pulled from the sea after a wooden boat capsized last Friday. (Christian Buettner/Eikon Nord GmbH Germany/Handout via REUTERS)

Randy Forbes is busy spending his campaign war chest on television ads in advance of the Republican primary to determine who will be the GOP nominee for the Virginia 2nd congressional district race.  One ad I find particularly offensive and dishonest.  It starts out with all the usual GOP touches: Forbes on a front porch with an American flag in the background.  He then proceeds to talk about Islamic terrorists "coming to get you" and then promises that he will stop them.

The ad plays on fear and, sadly, the mindlessness of many in the GOP base.  The most dishonest thing, however, is Forbes' claim that he will stop the terrorists.  Forbes has had years in Congress to do something, yet has no signature legislation to his name unless one counts resolutions pandering to far right Christian extremists that are an affront to the concept of freedom of religion in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.  Other than drawing a nice salary and perks that Forbes deeply enjoys - the reason Forbes is running as a carpetbagger candidate in the 2nd district -  Forbes has no reason to run for reelection.  He has no plan and has nothing from his past years in Congress to suggest that he will do anything but remain a extreme back bench seat warmer.  It would be difficult for Forbes' opponent, Scott Taylor, do do less than Forbes has done over the years in Congress.

The second portion aspect of the ad that is repulsive is Forbes' message that all Muslims - including the drowned child above - are would be terrorists.  Hand in hand with this is Forbes' callousness towards other humans  "created in the image of god" if you believe Forbes' feigned religiosity.  Other than being an extreme homophobe, virulently anti-abortion, and yearning to make America a Christian theocray with his form of Christian Sharia law, Forbes seemingly cares nothing for the Gospel message.  

Residents of the 2nd district need to give Forbes the boot and let someone else have the nomination and see if they can do more than Forbes has done.  It certainly would not take much.  It's time to send Randy Forbes into political retirement.

Disclaimer: I have known Randy Forbes since law school, and, in my opinion, he has become more extreme and less representative of Hampton Roads with every passing year.

Poll: The More GOP Voters Hear About Bush, the Less They Like Him

I am keeping my fingers crossed hoping that Jeb Bush will soon be forced to shutdown his campaign, but the good news is that many do seem to think that Jeb Bush's hubris filled campaign may be in a final death spiral despite Jebbie's effort the "reset" the campaign.  Now, Politico is running a piece that reports that the more GOP primary voters have learned about Jebbie, the less they like him.  Admittedly, we are talking about GOP primary voters who are nowadays by definition, insane.  Here are some article highlights:

The more that Republican voters hear about Ben Carson, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, the more they like them. Jeb Bush, not so much.

A new McClatchy-Marist poll conducted from Oct. 29 through Nov. 4 found that Carson has the most appeal as voters are more exposed to him, with 67 percent expressing that favorable view, and 20 percent saying they have a less favorable view the more they hear about the retired neurosurgeon. Rubio comes in second at 58 percent to 27 percent, followed by Cruz with 51 percent to 31 percent.

But the news isn’t as good for Bush, who has been attempting a reset from flagging poll numbers and a series of underwhelming debate performances. For the former Florida governor, 58 percent of Republican voters like him less after hearing more about him, compared with 32 percent who like him more.

The McClatchy-Marist poll also found that a majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents — 59 percent to 39 percent — say it’s more important to have a candidate who stands for conservative principles than one who can win.

Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, beats all candidates in hypothetical general election matchups, according to the poll, though she was just 2 percentage points ahead of Carson, 50 percent to 48 percent.

Will the Virginia GOP Shoot Itself In The Foot In 2016?

As the prior post noted, the attitudes and demographics of the nation are changing and the GOP is faced with shrinking appeal among voters and, but for gerrymandering, Republicans would hold far fewer seats in legislatures across the country. This trend is playing out here in Virginia and one sees time and time again the most extreme elements of the Virginia GOP base desperately clinging to the party's increasingly obsolete agenda of fostering right wing religion and subtle - and sometimes not so subtle - racism.  2016 could be a bell weather year for the Virginia GOP where a refusal to change course could be extremely damaging.  A piece in Outside the Beltway looks at the situation.  Here are highlights:

At the end of this week, the Central Committee of the Republican Party of Virginia will meet to put together plans for the party’s nominating contests in 2016 and, as Norman Leahy and Paul Goldman explain, they could end up making a decision that will make Virginia rather irrelevant to the nomination process next year and harm the Republican Party in the General Election:

[U]nlike most states, Virginia allows its state parties to choose the method of nomination. Recently, Virginia Republicans have made a mockery of the party’s presidential-nomination process. Normally, the state party and its local committees help presidential aspirants get on the ballot. Pro-Clinton Democrats are helping her rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), get on the ballot in New Hampshire. A real party wants to maintain the image of encouraging a free and open nomination contest.

Not so in Virginia. In 2012, only two of the many Republican presidential candidates managed to qualify for the primary because of the state’s restrictive ballot-access law. The traditional help went only to establishment favorite Mitt Romney. Barely 265,000 Republicans bothered to participate in this farce, a drop of 400,000 from the Bush win in 2000. 

The 2012 fiasco made Virginia a cable-news punchline. . . . state GOP leaders NOW seem eager to choose an insular convention system for 2016.

This isn’t a new territory for the Republican Party of Virginia, of course. In 2013, party activists with ties to the Tea Party and the Gubernatorial campaign of Ken Cuccinelli used their power on the committee to force a convention to pick the party’s 2013 statewide candidates rather than a primary.

Jackson lost the Lt. Governor’s race by a huge margin which made clear that even many mainstream Republican voters in the Commonwealth who voted for Cuccinelli could not support him,. Now, virtually the same group of activists who pushed for a convention in 2013 are arguing the party should do the same thing when it picks its Presidential nominee.

Given that Virginia has had a series of close elections since 2008, one would think this is an important concern for party leaders. Additionally, as with the caucuses we see in states like Iowa, conventions can be expensive and inconvenient, especially for people who have families. This means that fewer people participate in your convention, and thus the nominee you pick is more likely to represent a narrow segment of the party that may not play well with the electorate in the fall.

[I]n order for Republicans to win the Presidency they would need to win every state Mitt Romney won in 2012 as well as Ohio, Florida, and Virginia along with at least one other state that President Obama won in the last election. This makes Virginia crucial to the outcome of the election, and anything that the state Republican Party does to potentially make the state less competitive in the fall will have a big impact on the race.  If the committee members are smart, they will stick with a primary. Given the rigidity of the activists who seem to be driving the car in the RPV at the moment, though, don’t be surprised if they do the incredibly foolish thing of choosing a convention.

Conventions are favored, of course, by the Christofascists and other extremists in the Virginia GOP base who seek to insure that extremist candidates who share their insane values - or who will prostitute themselves to them - get the nomination.  They want as little public involvement as possible.

How Mike Huckabee Could Wreck the GOP Primaries

Most sane and rational people view Mike Huckabee as a religious extremist whack job.  Those people, however, do not comprise the GOP party base where the embrace of ignorance, bigotry and thumping the Bible are all strong positives.  Should Huckabee throw his hat in the ring for the GOP presidential nomination, even if he loses, he could help push the other candidates to embrace crazy land as they try to counter Huckabee's appeal to lunatic evangelical voters who folk to GOP primaries.  A piece in the New York Times looks at what Huckabee could do to GOP aspirations.  Here are excerpts:

The most important name that you haven’t heard much about in the Republican primary race is nonetheless a familiar one: Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor who took the pageantry of presidential announcements to a nearly parodic level on Friday by appearing on national television to announce that he would announce whether he would run on May 5.

Mr. Huckabee may not be receiving much attention, but he is as important as any of the other second-tier candidates in the race, like Ted Cruz or Rand Paul. He has demonstrated appeal to a crucial bloc of Republican primary voters: the religious right. If he runs, he will be one of the most significant figures in the primary season, with the ability to deny a crucial segment of voters or even states to another candidate.

Mr. Huckabee is a Southern Baptist minister and a compelling politician with natural appeal to evangelical voters and cultural conservatives. In 2008, his support among evangelicals allowed him to carry Iowa and five primaries.

He’s averaging around 9 percent in national polls, putting him ahead of candidates like Mr. Cruz, Mr. Paul, Marco Rubio and Chris Christie. Unsurprisingly, Fox News, ABC/Washington Post and Quinnipiac surveys over the last month suggest that strength is being driven by evangelicals, who have offered Mr. Huckabee an average of 15 percent of their support. 

It is easy to overlook the significance of evangelicals in the Republican Party.  . . . .  But the religious right remains the single largest voting bloc in the Republican Party, and that role has not diminished at all over the last decade.Evangelical Christians make up 49 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaners, according to a Pew Research polarization data set . . . . They represent as much as 80 percent of the primary vote in the Deep South and, more significantly, around 60 percent of Iowa caucus-goers.

A conservative candidate who hopes to win Iowa, like Mr. Cruz or Scott Walker, needs a substantial chunk of the evangelical vote. If Mr. Huckabee enters the race, he could pose a big roadblock to both. . . . And if Mr. Huckabee does win — as he very plausibly could over a strong, divided field — he will deny a more viable conservative candidate the easiest opportunity to consolidate the conservative opposition to Jeb Bush, or whoever wins New Hampshire.

Mr. Huckabee, to be clear, is not an especially viable national candidate. He won virtually no support among non-evangelical voters in 2008 . . . . It is unlikely that Mr. Huckabee could ever appeal to the relatively secular half of the Republican Party. He has adopted an increasingly strident tone on cultural issues and is strongly opposed by many fiscal conservatives, who have criticized him for raising taxes, increasing spending and opposing school vouchers as governor of Arkansas.

Mr. Huckabee is a classic factional candidate: someone whom the rest of the party would almost certainly rally to defeat if he seemed within striking distance of the nomination, but whose strength among a large faction of the party allows him to play a crucial, even possibly decisive, role in the race.