Blame Game Begins As Cuccinelli Fights Off Stench of Impending Doom

As noted over and over again, those opposed to the extreme GOP slate of Ken Cuccinelli, "Bishop" Jackson, and Mark Obenshain cannot get complacent.  All of us need to get out and vote on November 5th so that the hoped for GOP defeat will be as crushing as possible.  Meanwhile, it is sweet to read articles and columns already finding Cuccinelli DOA on election day.  Two in Politico are instructive.  The first Politico piece looks at the sense of doom surrounding Ken Cuccinelli's campaign.  Here are excerpts:

SPOTSYLVANIA, Va.—In politics, it is generally not a good omen when a candidate’s supporters argue that he still has a chance of victory — if the opponent’s supporters neglect to vote.

But this was Virginia Republican Chairman Pat Mullins’s version of the power of positive thinking in an interview this weekend. The path for star-crossed GOP gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli, Mullins said, looks like this: “If turnout is in the 30s, the low 30s, we’re gonna win. If it gets higher up in Fairfax [in Democratic-leaning Northern Virginia], say like 40, it’s likely we won’t. I don’t think it’s going to hit 40 anywhere. I’m looking at 32.”

This valiant effort at optimism is the kind of thing a campaign does in the closing hours when it becomes enveloped with an unmistakable stench of impending doom.

Listen to the talking points from the Cuccinelli campaign and its surrogates, and watch their decisions over time and money, and all the signatures of a classic political death march are on bright display.

And the same depressing polls Cuccinelli publicly dismisses have driven the candidate’s decisions. His strategy for the past couple weeks has been the equivalent of hospice care for a very sick patient. Real efforts at getting well — such as trying to persuade swing voters in the vote-rich Northern Virginia suburbs— have been all but abandoned. The alternative is palliative care, trying to ease the pain and wait for a miracle by focusing the candidate’s time and message on stimulating turnout among the conservative base that is already with him.

While Cuccinelli tries to keep his campaign on life support, many people who were never enthusiastic about nominating a zealous social conservative in an increasingly moderate state have been working for weeks on their unflattering obituaries.

 A second Politico article looks at the blame game that has already begun.   Sadly, the entity most responsible for nominating an extreme, horrific slate of candidates goes unnamed:  The Family Foundation.  The Cuccinelli-Jackson-Obenshain ticket is the dream ticket of the religious fanatics and hate merchants at The Family Foundation.  If the ticket goes down to defeat, that defeat needs to be hung directly around the neck of The Family Foundation.  Here are article highlights:

National Republicans agree on this much about the 2013 campaign in Virginia: It wasn’t supposed to go like this.

Well before the last votes are cast in the state’s off-year governor’s race, GOP leaders are already engaged in a spirited debate over why, exactly, a fight against a Democrat as flawed as Terry McAuliffe has turned into such a painful slog of a campaign.

The clearest battle lines will emerge after Tuesday; but the Washington community has groused for months about Cuccinelli’s history of incendiary, ultra-ideological stances, while rank-and-file activists have watched with horror as well-tailored GOP donors have defected to McAuliffe.

A Cuccinelli defeat, in other words, would have a thousand fathers. But this much is already clear: the GOP’s accumulated problems in Virginia have brought the party to the edge of a historic defeat in a nationally pivotal swing state, potentially producing a Republican shutout of all five statewide offices (governor, attorney general, lieutenant governor and two U.S. senators) for the first time since the Nixon administration.

Republican Governors Association executive director Phil Cox, whose group has spent nearly $8 million boosting Cuccinelli, firmly rejected the idea that the Virginia race reflected any limitations of conservative ideas. But he allowed that there may be lessons to learn about how you go about delivering a conservative message.

One Republican donor who has watched the Virginia race closely said the conclusion was even simpler: “You can’t win with a hard-right candidacy.”

“There’s just a lot of people that don’t like [Cuccinelli’s] harsh tone and don’t want to give him money,” the donor said. “He doesn’t do a great job with donors and he doesn’t have a great organization and a lot of people were turned off from the get-go.”

To GOP elites, the likely outcomes in Tuesday’s two gubernatorial elections looks like an instructive contrast: in Virginia, where the party nominated an uncompromising ideologue, Republicans face seemingly likely defeat; in New Jersey, where they have maverick Gov. Chris Christie at the top of the ticket, the GOP will hold the governorship easily. Virginia strikes party elites as a particularly clear example of the base getting its way: . . . . paying little heed to questions of electability, and look where they are now.

Conservatives in Virginia and nationally recoil from the idea that the problem with Cuccinelli’s race is ideology – that Republicans might have been better off nominating a more moderate candidate, or one who could more convincingly argue that he had spent his career focused on broad-spectrum issues like jobs.

Cuccinelli has labored hard to convince voters that he would be the stronger governor on economic development, thanks to his deep understanding of state government and penchant for cutting taxes. Voters don’t seem to be buying it: polls show that a majority of voters have an unfavorable view of the former Fairfax state legislator . . . .

Senior Virginia Republicans react with the equivalent of a deep sigh to conservative claims that Cuccinelli wasn’t proud enough of his own record as an ideological warrior – a tough sell for those who knew him in the state Senate – or that it was a fickle donor class that made the difference in the race. Cuccinelli has had many chances this year to moderate his social views; when challenged, he has reliably stood by his long-stated principles.

I hope Cuccinelli loses badly and that at some point focus will be on the organization that orchestrated the disaster: The Family Foundation, a true pestilence that threatens Virginia's future.

Ken Cuccinelli: the Anti-Chris Christie

Ken Cuccinelli may be the darling of the spittle flecked Christofascists who want a Christian theocracy in Virginia and the knuckle draggers of the Tea Party, but the recent polling suggests that Cuccinelli - or Kookinelli, as I prefer to call him - isn't gaining need traction among moderates and independents to win in November (I hope this trend continues).  In stark contrast, Republican Chris Christie appears headed towards a landslide reelection in New Jersey.  Some suggest that Kookinelli should learn a thing or two from Christie.  I would argue that such a transformation is impossible for Kookinelli, especially given his documented record of extremism.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the night and day differences between the two GOP candidates.  Here are highlights:

Chris Christie and Ken Cuccinelli are both New Jersey natives, Republicans, and their party’s gubernatorial nominee in their respective states. Beyond that, they share little else.

Christie, the governor of New Jersey, is a moderate conservative cruising to reelection; Cuccinelli, currently the attorney general of Virginia, is the darling of the GOP base and not much more. Christie has a double-digit lead over his Democratic challenger, State Senator Barbara Buono; Cuccinelli is down by about five points to former Democratic National Committee Chair, Clinton crony, and alleged grifter Terry McAuliffe, according to the latest pair of polls.

Christie’s strength in the reliably blue Garden State and Cuccinelli’s weakness in the Old Dominion are about persona, policy, and political reality. Christie knows that he’s the governor of a state that has consistently gone for Democratic presidential candidates over the last two decades. On the other hand, Cuccinelli fantasizes that Virginia voted for John McCain and Mitt Romney, and that ethnic-slurring George Allen made it to the Senate.

But Cuccinelli’s problems go deeper than that. Right now, he is underperforming even Romney’s showing in Virginia. Romney lost the state, but still managed to win its upscale voters and white women—Cuccinelli is losing both blocs to McAuliffe.

Cuccinelli owned stock in Star Scientific, the very same company whose chief, Jonnie Williams, showered both McDonnell and Cuccinelli with gifts—gifts that Cuccinelli has refused to return in kind or in cash. In all, only $18,000 or so is involved, and yet Cuccinelli cannot find it in himself to cut a check. Not surprisingly, McAuliffe hammers away on this sore point, leaving Cuccinelli trailing and the story festering.

More worrisome for Republicans is Cuccinelli’s incapability of eliding over hot-button social issues. As Virginia’s outgoing Republican Lt. Governor Bill Bolling sees it, Cuccinelli is a “rigid ideologue who thrives on conflict and confrontation and tends to be drawn to the more controversial and divisive issues of the day.”

Christie, meanwhile, is tradition-minded but not mired in debates over ultrasound wands or sodomy. He flatly stated that sexual orientation is a matter of biological predisposition.  . . . . He hasn’t dabbled with birtherism, in contrast to Cuccinelli.

Christie is of the modern world; Cuccinelli less so. For Republicans in Virginia and nationally, that is a problem. As one Republican White House veteran and Virginian put it, “the race is between a crook and a kook, and I expect the crook to win.”

Sadly for Cuccinelli, while voters may say “ugh” about “the Macker,” they have yet to walk away from him. Much as Cuccinelli may try to talk about taxes and roads, not enough voters are buying. A well-funded McAuliffe ad blitz is cementing an image of Virginia’s attorney general as fixated on social issues.

Cuccinelli’s struggle is compounded by the fact that Virginia’s demographics dramatically shifted, making it emblematic of the New South. Indeed, nothing tells the story better than a recent Quinnipiac Poll showing Hillary with comfortable leads over Christie and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in a hypothetical 2016 presidential matchup. She polls ahead of Christie by nine, and crushes Cruz by almost 20 points.

The times are changing, and the question for Cuccinelli and the Republicans is whether they can change with them. The GOP cannot continue to behave as if the whole country were a Republican primary—not if it endeavors to recapture the presidency.

Virginia GOP Losing Grip With New Voters

The need to reform the GOP isn't just a national level problem.  Here in Virginia the 2013 GOP slate of statewide candidates is the most extreme and in my view mentally disturbed in the history of the Commonwealth.  And who put these loons and extremists on the ballot?  The Christofascists led by The Family Foundation, of course.  The challenge for the Democrats will be to educate voters as to just how insane the GOP candidates are in fact.  Most people likely cannot believe that the GOP has sunk so low into extremism that people this extreme could actually be major party nominees.  A piece in Bloomberg.com looks at the growing divergence between younger and educated voters and the spittle flecked religious extremists who now control the Republican Party of Virginia.  Here are some article excerpts:

Loudoun County the wealthiest in the U.S. Technology companies, many with ties to the federal government, and other businesses fueled by the development have stoked an economy attracting higher educated workers and minority populations that have soared since 1990 -- a five-fold increase of Hispanics and seven times the number of Asians. 

Located 40 miles from Washington, D.C, Loudoun County is now considered by White House officials to be one of the best bellwethers for presidential elections. President Barack Obama won there in 2008, the first Democrat to do so since Lyndon Johnson in 1964, and again in 2012, victories that signaled how shifting economic and population trends are refashioning the politics of Virginia and the nation.

“We are seeing a solidly red state turn blue,” said Dustin Cable, a demographer at the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service in Charlottesville. “Virginia is really ground zero for a lot of what we see at the national level.” 

[T]he Old Dominion is also seeing a rise in Asian voters and in the number of residents with masters or doctorate degrees.  .  .   .  Democrats have won because of the combination of the demographic changes and the policy positions taken by Republicans on issues such as immigration and abortion rights. 

“It’s not just the change in demographics, it is the changing issue matrix the party has decided to embrace,” said Tom Davis, a former Republican congressman who represented counties in northern Virginia. “The social and cultural agenda of the party does not play to these educated people.” 

“One of the challenges the Republican Party faces in Virginia and a lot of other swing states is how do we remain a conservative party but still be able to appeal to these changing demographic patterns,” [Bill] Bolling said.

“I am a Republican. I am very concerned about the direction of the Republican Party but I believe in the Republican Party. But I’m not a happy Republican,” he said.

Bolling said his colleagues have done a poor job appealing to these emerging voters, and instead have retreated into a party where “you are persona non grata unless you agree with them 100 percent of the way, 100 percent of the time. We’ve got to move beyond that.” 

Still, Bolling said, if turnout matches historical averages for a governor’s race, Cuccinelli has a good chance of winning. In 2012, 3.8 million votes were cast in the presidential race, compared to 1.98 million in the last governor’s race, in 2009.  If it approaches the 75 percent level of a presidential year, Bolling said, “McAuliffe would win in a landslide.”

We need a landslide win for McAuliffe and the Democrat ticket.  Nothing less may force moderates to try to retake the party from the Christofascists.  The key is educating blacks, women, gays and other minorities as to just how extreme the GOP ticket is and how much they will work to disenfranchise minority voters, totally control women's bodies and make being gay a living Hell in Virginia.  These GOP candidates are not nice individuals and neither are those who nominated them.

 

The Family Foundation's "Legislative Scorecard" Confirms It's An Religious Extremist Organization

This blog mentions The Family Foundation ("TFF") - a far right extremist organization that is the virtual ruler of the Republican Party of Virginia - with some regularity because it is among the most tenacious and underhanded opponents to LGBT equality and religious freedom for all Virginians.  If one follows the activities of TFF, it quickly becomes evident that it wants nothing less than a Christofascist theocracy and that it's claim to be an organization focused on "strengthening families"  is a lie.  That's right, a lie - just like virtually everything else that comes out of TFF.   Blue Virginia sums up TFF true agenda well:

Note that almost none of this has anything to do with actually strengthening families, for instance helping parents and their kids get jobs, healthcare, a high-quality education, etc. Instead, it's mostly highly divisive stuff that's pretty much straight out of Pat Robertson's and Ken Cuccinelli's "social conservative" (e.g., anti-gay, anti-women's-right-to-choose) agenda. 

So how does a legislator earn a 100% score from The Family Foundation?  Here is a sampling of the "proper" votes one must cast in the General Assembly per the TFF Legislative Scorecard:

*YES on tax credits for "school choice" - i.e., state funding of religious schools.
*NO on the nomination of Judge Tracy Thorne-Begland, purportedly because he opposed Virginia's anti-gay-marriage amendment, but in reality because he's gay.
*NO on adding sexual orientation to Virginia's non-discrimination hiring policy
*YES to allow homeschool children to participate in public school sports programs.
*YES on demolishing the wall between church and state by allowing for sectarian prayers at any public government meeting.
*NO on any state funding for Planned Parenthood.
*NO on ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment. 
*YES to forcing women to undergo invasive ultrasounds before considering an abortion.
*YES to allowing adoption private agencies funded by the Commonwealth to discriminate against gays and on the basis of religious affiliation.
*YES to allow student groups receiving taxpayer funds to discriminate against gays and non-Christians .

Not a word about anything that would really "strengthening families" but a great deal about granting special rights to Christofascists and trampling on the rights of Virginians who do not subscribe to TFF's hate, ignorance and fear based religious dogma.  

Cuccinelli Echoes Romney’s Condemnation of the "47 percent"

As noted in a previous post, the national Republican Party has a Virginia problem and no one person embodies it more that Ken "Kookinelli" Cuccinelli as he continues to make it very clear that he is an extremist of the highest order.  The man, in my opinion, needs a serious mental health intervention, but that, of course, only makes him more of a darling to cretins and Christofascists in the GOP base, especially here in Virginia where ignorance and backwardness are considered the highest of virtues.  And just in time for the build up of the 2013 gubernatorial election Kookinelli has a new book out that will no doubt delight knuckle draggers and those who be thrilled by a return of the Spanish Inquisition in Virginia.  For everyone else, the book out to be a clarion call that Kookinelli is utterly unfit to be Governor of Virginia.  Both the Washington Post and Politico have reviews of the book which among other things echo's Mitt Romney's condemnation of 47% of the American populace.  First these highlights from the Washington Post piece:

Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s new book doesn’t hit stores until Feb. 12, but a few pages of it have trickled out to The Washington Post.

Spoiler alert: The pages reveal Cuccinelli is a conservative. His campaign declined to comment Wednesday night.

On the pages sent the Post’s way, Cuccinelli uses language akin to Mitt Romney’s famous “47 percent” comment. The Republican presidential candidate had suggested that a share of the electorate was so dependent on government hand-outs that it would never vote for him.

Romney’s words, captured on a hidden camera, helped sink his campaign. Time will tell how the similar language plays for Cuccinelli, who unlike Romney has never been accused of trying to pass himself off as a moderate. In his case, he wants voters to hear it.

A few excerpts:
— “Sometimes bad politicians set out to grow government in order to increase their own power and influence. This phenomenon doesn’t just happen in Washington; it happens at all levels of government. The amazing this is that they often grow government without protest from citizens, and sometimes they even get buy-in from citizens — at least from the ones getting the goodies.

“One of their favorite ways to increase their power is by creating programs that dispense subsidized government benefits, such as Medicare, Social Security, and outright welfare (Medicaid, food stamps, subsidized housing, and the like). These programs make people dependent on government. And once people are dependent, they feel they can’t afford to have the programs taken away, no matter how inefficient, poorly run, or costly to the rest of society.”

We of course who Kookinelli means when he talks about "the ones getting the goodies": blacks, Hispanics and minorities.  Those who are part of the angry white male base of the Virginia GOP.  As for gays, Kookinelli has made his hatred of us painfully clear.  And on abortion, Kookinelli wants a total ban.  No exceptions of any kind.

Politico has some interesting excerpts as well:

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has no intention of modulating his uncompromising conservatism to get elected governor. He just needs to explain it better than others have.

That’s the unmistakable message of the Republican gubernatorial candidate’s new book — a 252-page tea party jeremiad of blistering attacks on government in general and President Barack Obama in particular that could make it difficult to broaden his appeal to the kinds of voters he needs to win in November.

“The Last Line of Defense” presents Republican state attorney generals as the last line of defense for liberty. It’s packed with dire warnings about “the big-government leviathan,” “government diktats on every sector of our economy” and “big-government statists.”

In the acknowledgements, Cooch – as the 44-year-old is commonly called – praises the tea party: “I truly appreciate their commitment to first principles.”

On prohibiting insurance companies from denying coverage because of a preexisting condition, he adds: “Although this aspect of the law was very popular, it was one of the fastest ways to put private insurance companies out of business, as the costs of treating these conditions could easily exceed the premiums companies would be allowed to charge policyholders with the conditions.”

He also pointedly attacks an alphabet soup of federal entities, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Communications Commission, the National Labor Relations Board and the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement.  He calls Obama’s administration “the biggest set of lawbreakers in America.”

Few political professionals would encourage a candidate to write this kind of book, especially one who now faces no GOP opponent for the nomination. But Cuccinelli is believed to harbor grander ambitions than the governor’s office, and he is well positioned to be a thought leader of the conservative movement even if he loses in November.

Kookinelli has delusions of grandeur and in my opinion is just as crazy as Hitler was.  He belongs in a mental ward, not the Governor's Mansion.  That he is the unopposed GOP nominee speaks volumes about how low the Virginia GOP has fallen.  He must be defeated in November.

The GOP's Virginia Problem

As the Republican Party nationally attempts to fix its supposed "messaging" problem, GOP members of the Virginia General Assembly are busy making it clear to everyone watching that batshit craziness and extremism are the party's real problem regardless of how deep in denial GOP potentates maybe.  Frankly, what is being witnessed with the Virginia GOP is what one would expect when de facto control of the party has been turned over to white supremacists, knuckle dragging Neanderthals who celebrate the embrace of ignorance and the religious fanatics at The Family Foundation, a Christofascist organization with ties to the hate group Family Research Council.  Politico has a lengthy piece that looks at the GOP lunacy in Richmond and how it is churning out bad PR for the GOP nationally.  Here are excerpts:

As GOP leaders in Washington look to remake their national brand, they don’t have to look far to find their first real challenge.  It’s taming rogue Republicans right across the Potomac.

In the eyes of party strategists, Virginia’s off-year elections represent a first opportunity to bounce back from the losses of 2012 – a chance to reset the political debate in a critical swing state, send off popular Gov. Bob McDonnell on a high note and deliver a national message about the direction of the Republican Party.

If only the Republican state legislature, local conservative leadership and de facto gubernatorial nominee could stick to the talking points. Instead, national Republicans fear the true believers in Richmond could shout down their fledgling message of prudence and moderation in a state that’s easy prey for much of the political media.

The GOP-held state Senate rocked Old Dominion politics less than two weeks ago by passing a daring plan to redraw the legislative map, rushing the proposal through as a potentially decisive Democratic lawmaker was out of town for Inauguration Day. In the days since then, legislators again stirred national attention by flirting with – before ultimately discarding – a proposal to divvy up Virginia’s Electoral College votes by congressional district, effectively rigging the state for the GOP.
All of that came as a highly unwelcome sequel to the 2012 uproar over a Virginia measure – championed by conservative state Del. Bob Marshall – mandating ultrasound procedures for women seeking abortions.

It was less than a year ago that Democrats seized on that issue as a national cause, using it to drive Virginia women away from the GOP ticket from Mitt Romney on down. Within Virginia, Republicans blame the ultrasound firestorm for undercutting McDonnell as a vice presidential contender and damaging Senate candidate George Allen, who ultimately lost to former governor Tim Kaine.

Now, the same legislative body that steered the 2012 GOP message off course has struggled to refocus on a winning agenda for 2013. The still-unresolved redistricting controversy, Republicans say, has been an unwanted distraction from McDonnell’s ambitious proposals to overhaul education and transportation. The Virginia House of Delegates is expected to decide soon whether or not to take up the Senate’s provocative new legislative map, with McDonnell’s legacy and national profile once again at stake.

The stakes are far higher than in your garden-variety state legislative wrangling: Virginia has become one of the most important swing states in the country, a traditional GOP stronghold that now has two Democratic U.S. senators and voted twice for President Barack Obama.

While polls show the 2013 governor’s race is highly competitive, Republicans have felt distinctly anxious in recent weeks over a series of hard-right comments by state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, a hero of national conservatives who has continued to speak out on issues such as contraception and the Affordable Care Act despite outside pressure to pivot toward the middle.

Republicans are keenly aware that their political foes have perfected the art of hyping up clashes in Richmond and turning them to the GOP’s disadvantage. The governor’s office isn’t the only prize on the ballot this year: the other statewide constitutional offices hang in the balance, as does the Republican super-majority in the legislature’s lower chamber.

After the triumph of Democratic culture-war politics in the 2012 cycle, the party has actively worked to tie Cuccinelli to the legislature’s least popular actions – even as the Republican has expressed disapproval of measures like the Electoral College scheme. The state party has blasted out hits on “The extreme Cuccinelli-Marshall agenda,” referring to the state legislature who championed last year’s ultrasound bill.

And the Republican candidate has continued to offer up fodder, dabbling in the federal contraception debate on national talk radio and writing a book-cum-ideological manifesto, “The Last Line of Defense,” set for release in February.

McAuliffe communications director Brennan Bilberry signaled that the Democratic nominee would effectively enlist the legislature in making the case that Cuccinelli’s too much of a hardliner to serve as governor: “Cuccinelli’s desire to impose his social agenda in Virginia is especially disturbing to voters who know that many Republicans in the legislature would happily help implement his extreme ideas.”

Cuccinelli adviser Chris LaCivita dismissed the notion that even repeated cycles of legislative drama could have an impact on the overall climate for Republicans.

The simple truth is that the Virginia GOP has become a party of radical extremists with Cuccinelli being one of the most deranged of the lot.  I certainly will try to inform voters on the issue via this blog and my VEER Magazine columns.

The Insidious Tentacles of The Family Foundation

One of the biggest obstacles to progress and modernity in Virginia and certainly the largest obstacle to equality under the civil laws for LGBT Virginians is The Family Foundation ("TFF") based in Richmond, Virginia.  With ties to both Focus on the Family and Family Research Council, few organizations in Virginia are as virulently anti-gay and a few other organizations have their finger prints on virtually every anti-gay, anti-woman, anti-minority initiative in Virginia like TFF.  The leadership at TFF talk all the time about protecting religious freedom, but in TFF's view that translates to the freedom to inflict their extreme hate and fear based religious beliefs on all Virginians.  Be it pushing for regulations to allow adoption agencies to discriminate against gay parents or those of differing religious faiths, laws requiring invasive ultrasounds for those seeking abortions, to restrictive voter ID laws, The Family Foundation can always be found in the forefront of regressive and anti-liberty measures that impose TFF's Christofascist views on all Virginians. The image above is, in my opinion a good representation of the TFF agenda and the mindset of its followers.

How is one organization able to wield such toxic power and intimidate every Republican legislator across the state?  Because TFF has an organizational hierarchy that would make the Nazis of the 1930's envious.  First, it has regional chapters across the state which it itself describes in part  as follows:

Chesterfield Family Forum


Fairfax Family Forum Covers Fairfax County but encourages people from NOVA to take part in all activities.

Family Forum of the New River Valley  Covering Southwest Virginia from Washington County to Montgomery County. 

Lynchburg Family Forum  Covers the city of Lynchburg and Bedford County. The Lynchburg Family Forum was recently established and worked very hard during the marriage amendment. 

Prince William-Manassas Family Alliance  Covering Prince William and Manassas. 

Rappahannock Family Forum  Covers Spotsylvania, Stafford, Fauquier, Culpepper, Madison and Caroline Counties and Fredericksburg City. They were extremely involved in the marriage amendment.

Valley Family Forum Covers Harrisonburg, Rockingham County and the surrounding area. 

Yes, every one of these chapters disingenuously has the word "family" in its name even though the only families they are concerned with are white Christianist families.  But this is only the beginning of the insidious tentacles of the organization.  Through its "Pastors for Family Values" effort, TFF reaches into right wing churches across Virginia and orchestrates turn out the vote efforts and fans the flames of bigotry and anti-gay animus in particular.  The TFF website describes this effort as follows:

The Pastors For Family Values (PFFV) is a grassroots arm of The Family Foundation through which pastors connect to both The Family Foundation and other like-minded pastors. PFFV is denominationally, regionally and ethnically diverse, attempting to illustrate a unity in the body of Christ on pro-family issues. The PFFV is also sub-divided into regions so that local TFF chapters may interact with them as needed.

Disturbingly, many black pastors continue to line up as willing "Uncle Toms" to do the bidding of TFF even though TFF's fingerprints can be found on many anti-minority initiatives, including restrictive voter ID efforts and opposition to the restoration of voting rights for former non-violent felons.  Frankly, in my view, it is tantamount to these pastors working to further the efforts of the KKK.

And then there is the "E-Alert" network  and related efforts that allow the TFF leadership to message its Neanderthal followers across the state and rally them to threaten legislators who might otherwise realize that religious freedom extends beyond special rights for the Christofascists.

During the current session of the Virginia General Assembly and in the coming 2013 Virginia elections, The Family Foundation will be fully mobilized to work to keep Virginia in the 1950's if not 1850's.  TFF is an insidious organization and LGBT rights organizations and anyone who yearns to see a progressive Virginia needs to understand the depths of TFF's extremism and its power to rally bigots and racists and those who want to see women kept as chattel under a white male dominated system.  It is important to know one's enemies and to work to counter their toxic efforts to keep Virginia racist, anti-gay, anti-abortion under every circumstance, and a state where white privilege is enshrined.  Today's Virginia GOP is willingly doing TFF's bidding.

The Delusional Virginia GOP Blame "Poor Communicating" For Party's Reactionary Image

The GOP across the country continues to live in a bubble that separates the party's elected politicians from objective reality.  Nowhere it seems is the bubble stronger than here in Virginia where the state GOP leadership thinks the problem with the party's image as something to the right of Attila the Hun where women are to subjugated to men, blacks are to be disenfranchised, and gays driven back into the closet is all due to poor communications.  Never mind that the Virginia GOP is controlled by wild eyed religious extremists orchestrated by The Family Foundation, Tea Party lunatics and gun loving white supremacists that have all too clearly communicated the GOP's agenda to anyone who doesn't live under a rock.  Indeed, the extremism of the Virginia GOP's efforts during last year's General Assembly session likely did wonders to help Barack Obama carry Virginia again in 2012.  No doubt Democrats are hoping that the Virginia GOP is insane enough to cling to poor communications as the source of the party's problems rather than realize that it is the party's policies and social agenda that is alienating voters - especially in the states burgeoning urban areas.  Here are excerpts from the Washington Post:

As Republicans prepare to return to Richmond on Jan. 9, some are eager to avoid a repeat of the last General Assembly session, when they found themselves in a swirl of national media attention and even a “Saturday Night Live” parody over a bill that would have required women to get vaginal ultrasounds before abortions.

Some moderate Republicans are privately rooting for hot-button social legislation to die quietly in committee. But killing off those bills is not their entire strategy — and not one that conservative Republicans are on board with in any case.

More broadly accepted — among tea party favorites and establishment types — is the idea that Virginia Republicans have to get a better grip on how their work in Richmond gets conveyed to voters.

That means not only taking to social media but also pushing new issues — like a pair of proposed constitutional amendments to curb union power — that are likely to grab headlines and fire up the party base without igniting another reproductive-rights war.

“We recognize we must do a good job of messaging our entire agenda and making sure we cut through all the fervor and focus on social issues,” said Del. Ben L. Cline (R-Rockbridge), co-chairman of the conservative caucus. “We have to do a better job of communicating to the public the work that we do on fiscal issues, on pocketbook issues and on education.”

“Our problem is not being too conservative and our solution is certainly not wishy- washing the party down so we stand for nothing,” said Del. David B. Albo (R-Fairfax). “The problem is that we are not communicating.”

“What I’ve got to do is show my constituents that Dave Albo and the majority of Republicans are totally normal,” Albo said.

Albo lamented that in the midst of last session’s pitched social battles — in addition to the ultrasound issue, there was a failed “personhood” bill that would have bestowed legal rights on fertilized eggs, the rejection of a gay judicial nominee and a bill allowing state-funded adoption agencies to turn away prospective parents if they are gay — hardly anyone noticed that the state created 1,500 public university slots for in-state students.

Whether that happens could well depend on the fate of a single delegate’s bills, said Bob Holsworth, a longtime Richmond political observer and former Virginia Commonwealth University professor.  .   .   .  . “I think in this instance, a lot depends on what happens with Bob Marshall’s bills.”

Del. Robert G. Marshall (R-Prince William) is one of the House’s most prolific bill sponsors. Among his proposals last year was the personhood bill, which critics said could outlaw not only abortion, but IUDs and certain birth-control pills that can prevent implantation of a fertilized egg. The bill had cleared the House and was on its way to a Senate vote when it was scuttled amid the ultrasound uproar.  .  .  .  .   “If [Marshall’s] bills get bottled up and don’t succeed in the House, I think at the end of the day, you’ll find people talking about how the party leadership exercised message discipline.”

Marshall is not particularly interested in being reined in. If Republicans don’t take bold stands on issues like abortion and gun rights, he said, “what brand do the Republicans have?”   For this session, in response to the Connecticut elementary school massacre, Marshall is working on legislation requiring schools to arm some teachers, principals or other staff. Marshall is also considering resubmitting his personhood bill.

And then there are the Democrats, who played up the General Assembly’s antiabortion bills in the presidential and Senate races last fall and seem eager to keep the issue alive for the 2013 contests.  Barbara A. Favola (D-Arlington) said there are bills in the works that would amend or repeal the ultrasound law, and lift new building codes for abortion clinics.  “Just because they’re not going to bring it up again, I don think the issue’s dead,” she said.

Dave Albo's comment that Republicans are "totally normal" is laughable.  They are totally normal for someone out of the Spanish Inquisition but not compared to normal, rational, non-racist, non-religious extremist Virginians.