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Voting for Cuccinelli
My wife Beth and I went to vote yesterday at our usual polling place on the University of Virginia campus. I went with no enthusiasm, more out of a sense of duty, I suppose, and of bearing witness.
Outside the polling place were two pavilions for last minute canvassing. The Republican tent was, characteristically, empty, while the Democrat team, with blue and green McAuliffe banners flying, looked cool and smug.
For good reason. They had waged a ruthless, vicious, dishonest and brilliant campaign– not just to elect Terry McAuliffe governor but to discredit and destroy the Virginia Republican Party, and Republicans both in Washington and Richmond let it happen.
The Cuccinelli campaign has to have been the worst for a state office I’ve seen in a long time.
But as I said, the Democrats were brilliant.
First, starting this summer they and the local media began destroying the reputation of our sitting GOP governor Bob McDonnell with a feeding frenzy of stories about how a wealthy backer had given McDonnell and his family gifts and financial help (which McDonnell later returned). That not only took McDonnell, who’s been a successful and popular governor — some even considered him a presidential contender in 2016 — out as kingmaker for Ken Cuccinelli’s campaign. It also poisoned the well for all Republicans in the state, and made them look like the party of corruption and sleaze. And when you are running against Terry McAuliffe, that’s saying something.
Republican response: silence.
A host of liberal feminist groups like Planned Parenthood launched a barrage of ads portraying Cuccinelli as the second coming of the Salem witch trials.
Republican response: nothing.
Then a Texas Obama bundler named Joe Liemandt began bankrolling Robert Sarvis to run as a libertarian candidate for governor, fatally splitting the GOP vote.
Republican response: a long deer-in-the-headlights stare at polls that showed Sarvis wasn’t going away until literally the day before the election the Cuccinelli campaign got Ron Paul to come out and denounce far too late Sarvis’s bogus campaign.
Fourth and equally fatally, the national GOP decided to pull the money plug on Cuccinelli in October, deeming him unelectable.
Given the feebleness of the campaign’s efforts thus far, that might have seemed justified. But it’s becoming clear the real reason was to be able to blame the looming debacle in Virginia on the Tea Party and the advocates of government shutdown like Ted Cruz.
That plan has backfired. Instead, the GOP missed the opportunity to seize on the growing disenchantment with Obamacare—disenchantment that almost upset the Democrats’ best laid plans here in Virginia at the last minute, and came to within 55,000 votes of pushing Cuccinelli over the finish line. Now even the mainstream media are saying the GOP made a major error in not backing Cuccinelli.
Meanwhile, here in Virginia we’re stuck with the equivalent of a Soprano family capo as governor –a liberal Soprano capo. We’re also stuck with a broken Virginia GOP and the same feckless GOP national leadership.
Sophocles said those whom the gods want to destroy they first drive insane. Today they just make them Virginia Republicans.
Published in General
I totally get what you’re saying about the AG race but the Sarvis voters themselves say otherwise … the difference with the AG race could be anything … it could be moderate GOPers splitting their vote, for instance. But the data don’t specifically answer that question, I don’t think … ·12 hours ago
Given that I’m still skeptical that the majority of Sarvis voters would have gone for McAuliffe but then vote for Obenshain.
However, I will concede that you may be right.
If that’s the case, then the takeaway I get is that its not your views which sink your candidacy (take Christie for example, or how Obenshain might eek out a win) but rather how much you allow yourself to be hammered on them.
Cuccinelli was much maligned during this race and never did a good job of responding to the attacks. He ran his own ads against McAuliffe, but never gave a good effort to dispel the narrative of him being “wrong for Virginia”.
Obenshain on the other hand did respond.
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Not every program that benefits someone is undertaken because that someone bought you off, sometimes you need to build stuff because the 19th century infrastructure is outdated. Would it be better to use tolls for more of the funding? Sure. But the gas tax does have problems due to increasing fuel efficiency, and you can make a case that something needed to be done.………….
Are you really saying that the equitable way to address traffic problems is to increase the general sales tax by 20% while eliminating the gas tax on those who actually use the roads?
I am saying that it was not unreasonable to effect a compromise in order to get the necessary program through. The gas tax is a consumption tax, so is the sales tax. In almost every respect, those who buy stuff also use the roads. The problem with the gas tax- nice as it is in many ways, is that unless you loaded it up with automatic escalators- which any conservative should hate- the gross revenues are not at all predictable when fuel efficiency steadily improves as a matter of both markets and policy.
As usual, John Podhoretz has an excellent commentary on this, as he does on most things.
Aside from getting his facts wrong, glossing over the culmination of factors that led to Cuccinelli’s drop in the ratings with a sophomoric blanket excuse of “bad candidate”, and telling those he disagrees with to mature beyond being emotional after spending weeks himself being emotional and whiny after someone dared call him a RINO, yeah it wasn’t bad.
A s a Virginia voter and business person who does not live in NVA or Hampton Roads, I have two observations: I was part of the GOP convention that voted for this ticket. I can tell you that the ten thousand delegates that were there represented small business, large families and the home schooled; the backbone of what makes Virginia a great place to live. They, and I know the establishment GOP didn’t support Cuccinelli, because many are rent seekers: Boyd Marcus, Bill Boling’s campaign, manager who defected for money, John Chichester of Stafford County, former GOP Senate Majority leader who never saw a plot of land that could not be bulldozed and paved. Eric Cantor, my Congressman did squat, while we watched his wife recently join the board of directors of Goldman Sachs. The GOP will pay a price for this among the little people.
Second, Virginia is like New Jersey in the 1920’s: rich, Republican, low tax, heavily resourced and then destroyed by a single party rolling machine. That is Virginia’s future fate, it is inevitable, and I accept it. The point is, after 400 years of Family living here, where else to go?
I feel much the same way. My family has lived in the southern foothills of the Blue Ridge for over 225 years. There’s nowhere else I’d rather live.
I feel much the same way. My family has lived in the southern foothills of the Blue Ridge for over 225 years. There’s nowhere else I’d rather live. ·58 minutes ago
Whiskey Sam, Bless you! and I could not agree more. My family is in the process of selling a Farm in the Lower Shenandoah Valley, 60 miles west of DC. Interestingly enough, a great deal of buyer interest comes from Silicon Valley types looking for a “second home” near Washington DC. People go where the money is. That used to be NYC, now it is moving to DC, and our Commonwealth’s loss.
We will not leave Virginia altogether but the beautiful lands and good people of Western Virginia look better all of the time!!
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Are you really saying that the equitable way to address traffic problems is to increase the general sales tax by 20% while eliminating the gas tax on those who actually use the roads?
I am saying that it was not unreasonable to effect a compromise in order to get the necessary program through.
Yes, it was a masterful compromise. Our Republican governor was so anxious to raise tax revenue to enrich his crony-capitalist friends that he agreed to Democrat demands for even larger tax increases to grease the political gears. And everybody got a share except the taxpayers, who got the shaft.
Whatever you say- I agree with Podhoretz. Did you prefer O’Donnell to Castle as well, and Angle to Tark?
When I lived in Northern Virginia, the traffic was a disaster. It does not take a lot of trenchant analysis to see that a) something needed to be done with transportation- and that view is not unique to construction firms, regardless of your cronyism accusations. And b) there are real problems with relying on the gas tax to resolve it. You can put toll roads in high volume areas where EasyPass infrastructure costs allow a net positive C/B, but you can’t do that for Hunter Mill Road.
In Minnesota we have the same problem- outstate farm communities constantly whine about the Twin Cities getting all the state cash for projects. Of course, the Twin Cities also generate most of the revenue as well.
The key is still- in this real world, governors have to govern. Sometimes, to do something necessary, you have to make compromises in order to get necessary things done.
I know you hate compromise- so hate Reagan because he compromised constantly. He realized that he was president of all the people (something Obama forgets).
O’Donnell was unfit for any office anywhere and had never won an election for anything. She was manifestly unqualified for the Senate. The problem was not Castle getting primaried; it was Castle losing to a candidate with a long history of clownish public statements and questionable personal finances who was easily exposed as being unqualified for office.
Tarkanian came in third in that Nevada primary, and he’s lost every general election he’s been in (Nevada Senate, Secretary of State, and US Congress). I don’t see how he’s necessarily a better option.
Governors do have to govern, but when your party controls the House, has a 50-50 Senate split and the tiebreaking vote in your Lt Gov, you don’t have to make major concessions to the other side. Virginia is not Minnesota.
The problem wasn’t one funding, it was a mixture of piss poor planning and an ever expanding suburb.
Those NOVA communities underbuilt their infrastructure initially. Even when they expand today they still under build. Combine that with an obsession with HOV lanes and you get massive congestion. Add in a continuing influx of people coming to work in the Imperial City and you get a disaster.
People then run for office on the premise that they’ll fix the roads, but they never do, because then what would they run on the next election?
Yep. The RGA, led by RINO Jindal, RINO Walker, etc., wanted Cuccinelli to lose, because they were afraid of him.
I have yet to see you even once acknowledge that establishment GOP officeholders in VA were openly endorsing McAuliffe, some out of personal spite because Bolling didn’t get the nomination. Cuccinelli’s numbers changed less than 1% during the shutdown. Any speculation it hurt him is just that because there’s no evidence of it changing his standing. But please, keep preaching to us from Minnesota about politics in our home state.
Sorry Whiskey Sam, read Jeffrey Lord’s piece in the America Spectator online today, as I did, he names the GOP names.
Good piece. Here’s the link. And he doesn’t even mention the GOP officeholders in VA who were actively doing ads endorsing McAuliffe.