But just barely, it’s looking like. A few weeks ago it looked like Cuccinelli was going to go down hard, probably by double digits. I don’t honestly think Bloomberg did McAuliffe any favors, since it was during his big gun control push that he started losing ground. But a win is a win, and hopefully the GOP does well enough in the down ticket races that we won’t have much to fear from McAuliffe. We shall see. But I think this is another indication that strong social conservatives aren’t viable candidates in swing states.
UPDATE: More on Bloomberg not helping.
Is not for the Libertarian candidate, we would have won.
False. People get the votes they earn. All he had to do was not suck.
We actually agree on something.
And again, he was outspent 6-1. That makes a huge difference.
Maybe he was outspent cause he was a freak, who wants to invest money in that?
And worse the Libertarian in the race seemed to be a real LINO.
Supporting GPS devices in cars for per-mile taxes? Really?
The party of personal responsibility: blame someone else.
To be fair, Cuccinelli was yet another lousy GOP candidate. Why would most women or young people – much less minorities vote for the guy? His social positions are toxic baggage that turn off metropolitan voters.
It’s good that he lost, but it’s also bad that McAuliffe won. Bad options all around.
And McAuliffe was yet another lousy Dem candidate.
Again we see no actual governing experience, just a lifetime of questionable dealing being a bagman for the Beltway/NYC nexus.
But his extremist social positions (not to diminish Cuccinelli’s nuttery) went off without a peep.
Having the approval of the mass media really is like having aircover.
The only reason people voted for him was because he wasn’t the GOP.
Which that among with the media issue show some major things the GOP needs to work with to overcome.
That the gap closed down so much shows that some things can be learned, but a primary thing is: don’t pick social cons that blather with off-putting things.
I would prefer a “trojan horse” strategy. Thing is, you need cons who are good at not shooting their mouth off during an election.
Or how about promoting people who don’t want to tell other people how to live? Kind of like a “liberty platform” or something? That would certainly be better than tricking the electorate into voting for some authoritarian who thinks he knows how everyone else should live their lives. There are enough of those on the D side of the aisle. Surely we can offer an alternative to that instead of offering the same thing by deception.
mike… I’ll say what I mentioned earlier. Show me how a “liberty platform” that doesn’t force businesses to do business with or hire people they don’t want to. Show me how my tax dollars don’t go toward funding people’s sex lives or killing someone else. Then I’ll buy into your “liberty platform”. Until then, I’m unconvinced a “liberty platform” is even a starting issue except for social liberals. In fact, I don’t even think you can define it. Tell me how, in pragmatic terms, this platform starts in the GOP. I certainly know there hasn’t been a politician who can articulate it.
Well, not restricting the rights of the electorate might be a good start. Some on the right completely understand not wanting the government to restrict their gun rights, but then get all hot and bothered trying to restrict a woman’s right to choose, tell people which plants people can ingest, and whether their relationships are acceptable according to their gods. The GOP can keep fighting those battles – and lose – or get with the 90s and find some core competencies and stand for them. Limited government and individual liberty would be a good place to start. Even though those conflict with pushing their losing social fixations..
I think being against killing of innocents (all kinds, including the inconvenient kind you seem have no problem with), against child predators, and being pro-law-abiding-citizen-with-a-gun is a reasonable and consistent position for a candidate to have. It seemed to work for AG-elect Mark Obenshain, after all. How did he connect with independents where Cuccinnelli failed? It’s a lot easier to take your position, which requires little in the way of postpartum dissection, rather than look at the facts.
Now what is the difference between Obenshain and Cuccinelli? Why… The Washington Post even claimed that Obenshain was Cooch’s clone!
And how did all of this magically work for Bob McDonnell in 2009?
“But his extremist social positions (not to diminish Cuccinelli’s nuttery) went off without a peep.”
Here’s the thing: extremists on the left are treated like they’re normal. The media is filled with people pushing the far side of left, so and there are enough of them that leftist extremists aren’t shown for what they are. For example, if the media was overrun by feminazis, then they’d show feminazism as normal. Instead, the media is overrun by far left extremists planting the idea that that’s “normal”.
And here’s the other thing – and something the right can’t really compete with btw – even if some lefty is way out there and is off the scales, all he has to do is promise more free shit than the other guy, or promise to punish/tax those evil rich people, and he’ll win the Joe/Jamal Sixpack vote. GOP candidates can only offer more liberty (someday, fingers crossed anyway) or the promise (but not guarantee) of lower taxes. That’s not a lot to get the Judge Judy crowd terribly worked up. Free Stuff, on the other hand, is.
When the GOP pushes through this amnesty bill this year, they’ll further cement their irrelevance since there’s no way they’re going to win the illegal vote. But they’ll get the promise (again, without the guarantee) of some campaign funds for exactly one more cycle. The next cycle, who knows. But all they have to do is destroy the country with amnesty and they get exactly one election funded. Then it’s back to grovelling.
mike… Do you fail to see the irony in this? Amnesty is going to be reduced, as you have been doing with your talk of ditching social conservatives, to being something the GOP also has to do to just “be more inclusive.” You just pointed why most of these ideas are losers. Congratulations.
BTW I am seriously not discounting the idea of a liberty ticket. I am just looking for a pragmatic way of implementing it and processing it for the low info voters.
Low info voters won’t get a liberty ticket. It’s a non-starter. Instead, all they have to do is stop telling women they’re going to take away their reproductive rights. And maybe stop telling poor people they hate them while they’re at it.
Not true at all. Cuccinelli won among married women and independents. Hardly an indicator of a ‘lousy candidate’.
More of an indicator of unmarried women who are LIV, motivated by MSM propaganda.
Obenshain’s numbers would be Cuccinelli’s if it were not for the LINO. Eat it, mike.
Title says: “Bloomberg Successfully Buys the Virginia Governorship”
Then the article states: “I don’t honestly think Bloomberg did McAuliffe any favors.”
I get the Bloomberg-as-boogeyman thing, but jeez.
The title isn’t meant to be entirely serious. It’s what the spin is going to be.
Honestly, it should be part of the spin. Let’s tar them with a rich nanny man. Every time I argue that point in regards to anything with Bloomberg (i.e. the Colorado elections), they have no response to it.
I’m copying this over from the “What’s at stake” thread:
I just turned the TV off, and I’m heading for the showers in a minute, but here’s how I’m thinking:
This turned out much closer than the the mainstream (or I!) had been expecting. Clicking from channel to channel, I saw MSNBC (at the most leftist channel) saying it was a given for McCaulliff, when for most of the time it wasn’t at all. They had to be shitting bricks until close to 11:00 PM. The Cootch had a big lead, through a big percentage of the votes.
Here’s how I honestly see it: Here in PA I saw a sampling of the Bloomberg-sponsored ads that were all about gun control. I disliked the Cootch about as much as Sebastian did (actually, more) but if I had been about to walk into a voting booth, they would have caused me to vote for Cootch.
I think the election was as close as it was because of the gun vote. Without us, the Ds would have had a commanding lead, rather than a marginal one. The campaigned away their own easy victory — though victory they had.
I believe in that, and let’s spread that meme — because it’s true! (They’ll have their “Bloomberg” meme, but let’s have our own — the truth!)
Mark Obenshain, and his record of being divorced from the dirty laundry of the previous administration, kept this from being a Democratic sweep. I largely believe you’re right about gun owners.
It looks like Obenshain’s win is within the margin error. Not sure that’s a mandate for the gun lobby.
Turns out, The Daily Show covered this election yesterday:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-november-4-2013/cuccinelli-vs–mcauliffe
I watched the results roll in by precint.
The hard core D-voting areas are NOVA, Charlottesville (UVA), and the urban ghettos of Norfolk/Portsmouth/Richmond.
How do you get government employees, urban populations with large numbers of people dependent on some sort of government handout through generational welfare, and academics to vote for anything other than a Democrat? Or, in the context of this blog (being a 2A single issue one), how do you get them to drive significant change within the Democratic party to bring back some sort of respect for gun rights?
Exactly how its done. Mac daddy the welfare rolls, condom machines, plan b pill machines, and add some Karl Marx/Frederick Engels based “academics” and………… BAAMMM!! Instant communism and a blue state. It is disgusting what this country has become. I pray that the GOP in PA retains the state house of delegates and the senate. No matter what, the next PA Governor, will be a Democrat (Communist).
Anyway you slice it, the barebones truth is that if the libertarian candidate had dropped out we would have a progun conservative in the govs mansion right now.
You are probably right in this case, because the race was so close, but since I used to speak libertarian fluently allow me to add this:
I really don’t know how libertarian Sarvis was, but in his absence, there is a fair chance that many, even most of the people who voted for him wouldn’t have voted at all. I have left many levers unpulled in the voting booth over the years. And, Cuccinelli being about as anti-libertarian (or more so) than McAuliffe, albeit with different issues, there is no guarantee that the people who did vote would all or even mostly have voted for Cuccenelli. The idea that libertarians are really just Republican Party Lite, bent on nurturing a few eccentricities, may have a pretty solid foundation, but is not universally true.
How about this: If Cuccinelli didn’t spend so much time alienating women and gays, some would have voted for him.
He lost because he couldn’t attract enough votes to win. Blaming people who could attract those votes is futile. You might as well blame McAuliffe.
“If [VA governor-elect] Terry McAuliffe hadn’t taken all of Cuccinelli’s votes, Cuccinelli would have won! It’s unfair!”
Um, negative mike. I blame people who ran but could never have won. Thereby steeling votes from someone, who would have won. Nobody not even the lib thought he was gonna win, but he knew he was gonna take votes from cooch and that just sick. If he didnt have the brains to see that he had no hope of winning with all the forecast polls, how could he ever be trusted with a political office.
The dems just love themselves some Libertarians..oh yea!
So the people who thought the the [fake] Libertarian candidate best represented their interests shouldn’t have had that choice because it was inconvenient for the GOP candidate? If we’re going by the “could never win” test, then Joe Lhota should never have run in NYC either.
You don’t get to disqualify candidates because they appeal to voters who aren’t you. Cuccinelli lost because he couldn’t attract the majority of the voters. Period. Nobody stole any votes from him. To borrow a phrase from social conservative Todd Akin who also lost in the War on Women, you could say that Cuccinelli “legitimately raped” his own electoral prospects. For the War on Women and homophobe folks, I don’t think he’ll do you any favors either. It’s ironic how pushing a social conservative gets you a left-wing extremist whose views are the polar opposite. If the GOP choice wasn’t pushing any of that crap, he probably would have won and the social status quo would have been maintained. Now, they’ve successfully advanced the leftist agenda by 10 years by making McAuliffe the only palatable choice to folks in the middle. Good job, [useful] idiots.
mike, the guy could have never won, never. the polls should this so clear it was beyond the realm of opinion. A vote for him was a vote for McAulif.
Put your big boy pants on, voting has consequences, as the good people of VA will soon find out.
Nice and slow this time:
People aren’t required to vote for candidates only on the basis of whether they can win. They vote for them on the basis of whether they feel their interests are best represented by that candidate. Sometimes that person will definitely lose the election, but it allows the voter to go home and not have to rinse the disgust off in the shower.
The bigger question you might want to ask yourself is: Why did all of those people vote for someone they knew would lose instead of voting for one of the other candidates? You seem to think that’s because of some trickery on the L candidate’s part, as opposed to the many shortcomings of the GOP candidate. Cuccinelli sucked so much that people made an effort to show up at the polls and then voted for someone they knew would lose instead of voting for him. And yet you think he deserved those votes. The people who knew they were voting for a losing L candidate disagree.
Slow is something your type does well.
While they were in the booth voting for the LIB, they should have just voted for McAulif…same thing. SO hold onto your belief that because the GOP guy was not perfect, that throwing away a vote on a guy who could not win was the answer for VA. Good call, enjoy your hardcore antigun, left wing nutjob of a gov…you literally voted for him and are directly responsible for him being elected.
1. I don’t live in VA.
2. The “A vote for the Libertarian is a vote for the Democrat” thing is laughable. I’ve also heard liberals say that a vote for the Libertarian is a vote for the Republican. Heck, they probably said it a whole bunch in Virginia right before this election.
I do live in VA, and it’s foolishness like this that caused so many people to vote for the Obama-founder backed fake Libertarian, instead of the only Constitutional defender in the race. Now, indeed, we are stuck with the results, and I hope I don’t lose my AR as a result.
So many LIV…
Put the big boy pants on mike, sometimes there is never a good call and a bad call in life, there is only a bad call and a worst call. And in this election…VA got the worst one, and McAuilif can and does thank the LIB voters for it. They literally gave it to him.
I mean seriously man, how many elections have to be lost this way before people stop voting for these clowns?
Just because the conservative is not perfect does mean you throw your vote away on a guy who can not win. NOT, period, not win at all, ever. This is why we have early polls, the gauge the public’s views.
PS: I consider myself a pretty solid libertarian.. but that doesnt mean I reject reality when its staring me right in the face. The guy was not going to win.
You’re looking at elections the wrong way. There were 3 candidates in this election:
D
R
L
You assume that because the L wouldn’t have won, everyone should have been forced to vote for the D or R instead. Some people don’t want to vote for people they don’t want to see win. Both the D and the R in this race disgusted a lot of people, and they didn’t want either of those candidates to win. The ones who showed up to vote had another option and some of them chose it: L. It could have been the Green Party or the Communists for all that matters. But if people didn’t want the other candidates to win and would have been happy if their 3rd party choice won (despite knowing it was virtually impossible), then why is that a bad choice for them? Because it’s inconvenient for you? Not good enough.
If someone can go in the booth and choose a candidate that answers the question “Who would I like to see win?”, then why is it wrong? Our right to vote is about choosing candidates that best represent our interests. If people would rather choose a losing candidate than vote for a D or R, then the D or R candidates might benefit from some introspection.
Put the big boy pants on mike, sometimes there is never a good call and a bad call in life, there is only a bad call and a worst call. And in this election…VA got the worst one, and McAuilif can and does thank the LIB voters for it. They literally gave it to him.
Nobody forces anyone to do anything, its a free country, vote for whoever you want. But elections have consequences… and you will be living with yours for the next few years.
Your state will now be governed by a guy who stands against just about everything in the libertarian view. You cast your vote away instead of supporting the option of voting fora guy who only differs on a few points.
1. I don’t live in VA.
2. Even if I did live in VA, it’s unlikely I would have voted for Cuccinelli because I wouldn’t want to see him win. Just like McAuliffe. Sometimes it’s easier than choosing ideologically pure candidates. If I’d be ok with even a shitty candidate winning, I could vote for them. I don’t know if I could do that for Cuccinelli because of all the social conservative baggage that comes with him. Gun rights aren’t the only rights commenters on this blog believe in.
3. You learn slow.
4. Even Ron Paul gets it… to vote for the LIB candidate is “insane” http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/11/04/Ron-Paul-to-Virginians-Insane-to-Vote-for-Libertarian-Robert-Sarvis
All over now, not like it matters, the Libertarians are probably planning on how they can help get Hillary elected in 2016.
“social conservative baggage”? Seriously…
Well, our friends in VA will soon learn of what baggage Mr. McAuliffe carries with him. lol
About 35% of Virginia households include a gun owner. CNN is saying their exit polling found 47% of voters have a gun owner in the household, so yay for gun owning households punching above their weight. Unfortunately, 33% of them voted for McAuliffe. I can’t help but wonder how many of those 33% are beltway commuter Only Ones who are perfectly fine with electing a gun grabber because they know the rules won’t apply to them.
As for McAuliffe losing ground during the big influx of Bloomberg attack ads, I think it’s worth noting that it came around the time that the news has been inundated with reports of how the Democratic party’s biggest achievement in generations is an unmitigated disaster. Bloomberg adding to the 4-1 spending advantage may have prevented events from overtaking the campaign.
It should be telling that despite these massive spending efforts, the Dems aren’t buying support in these elections in double-digit sweeps. That has to be disheartening in a sense that with all that supposed “support”, it is clear they don’t have a mandate and it was more a referendum on who sucked harder.
No offense to HappyWarrior6, but there are a lot of us out there who feel that all the GOP have to do to win over and over again is simply say that regardless of their personal feelings on abortion, it is a woman’s right to choose and leave it at that. That accomplishes two very important things: It shows that the politician might have a smidge of integrity and be able to put their own feelings aside and actually govern and more critically, defuse that issue from the Dem side.
When you look at it in light of recent events, it really is the only plank the Dems have and are using as a wedge against the GOP. If the GOP appealing to their “base” is losing them elections but making them feel good due to their family values, morality, etc, find a new base! Like it or not, they are not in the mainstream. Whether or not you agree with abortion or gay marriage is irrelevant. You lose attacking them long-term.
I’m male so I can’t have anything but an opinion on abortion. And my opinion shouldn’t be allowed to control the lives of half of the people in the country. Because that is truly what the debate is about: control. Morality control. Think about that and be honest because that is no different than gun control. Both are the same.
Same goes for gay marriage but it is simpler. If people want to go through the hoops of being married and being miserable like the rest of us, go right ahead! In fact, I have thoroughly enjoyed hearing about gay divorce. Why? Because like teenagers in love for the first time, once the shiny and novel wears off, reality sets in. I am convinced a lot of married gay couples somehow expected their marriages to be better or different because they were. Once the reality that marriage is marriage, with all of the joys and downsides, a lot of the furor will die down and couples will simply be couples.
Seriously, do you really care if they are both men or women? How on this earth do two people making a life together harm you in any way?
Between that and abortion, dislodge both those planks and the Dems go down in flames. Even with the media air superority. As VA demonstrated, people aren’t foold. Hell, I only wish Bloomberg had another couple of days worth of ads. He might have bought the whole thing for Cucinelli.
All GOP have to do in 2014 is back off the gay marriage stuff, say abortion is the settled law of the land (take that, Senate Dems!) and keep their mouths shut. ObamaCare, in all its splendor and glory, will do the rest. All they need to do is remind voters of what the Dems have done to them. And if they actually do deliver on liberty in the process, Dems won’t hold national power for the next 10 to 20 years.
You can still be pro-gun and win in VA, McDonnell did it in 2009 and even won most of NoVA, sans Arlington and Alexandria (which will probably never vote for a Republican again). What was McDonnell’s recipe for success? Even though he was a conservative for anyone who did the research, he ran on a more moderate platform of jobs, the economy, and transportation. I voted for him in 2009 and thought aside from the 11th hour mini-scandals, did a great job as governor.
Cuccinelli has been a social crusader since his days in the state senate, he’s never hid it. The Dems were able to jump on that baggage and put those social issues front-and-center. You just cannot run on a social-conservative platform in VA anymore, because NoVA has become the driving force for the state.
This is the reality of the situation, VA isn’t going back to the good ol’ days of hustling tobacco and peanuts. The VA GOP either needs to accept it or get relegated to the rural areas and basically hand the state over to the Dems in every gubernatorial and national election form here on out.
I’m going to digress a little and ask: I’ve heard it said (and quoted it) that in the very early 1930s there was a cliche’ in Germany, “We’ll vote for the Nazis to handle the Communists, and then we’ll be able to handle the Nazis.”
Does anyone know if that is an authentic quote? If it is, I don’t need to ask how it turned out, tactically.
It’s a quote from “Cabaret” anyway. From an aristo character that ends up getting while the getting is good.
I didn’t want to jump into the “What’s the point of voting for a sure loser?” debate above, as I’ve been avoiding such pissing contests as fruitless for close to twenty years now. But, I guess nostalgia has overwhelmed me, so I will make the following observation:
If I vote, what I am doing in addition to (possibly) electing a candidate, is publicly adding my voice to endorsement of what the candidate I vote for stands for.
Saying again that, since I don’t live in Virginia, I don’t really know a lot about Sarvis, and haven’t expended much energy to find out what he’s really like, since I couldn’t vote for him, I can still suppose why someone might have: Because they don’t want to appear publicly to endorse for the future the key points of the platforms espoused by either the Republican or the Democratic candidate.
A vote for either candidate will be counted as, “Well, umpteen hundred thousand people have said they will go along with A, B, and C. So let’s give them more of that.” It seems to me entirely reasonable to say, “I don’t believe my ‘D’, gun rights, will fare well enough under either candidate that I want to endorse A, B, and C, or E, F, and G, all of which I abhor.” So I either will not vote and provide those endorsements, or, I will vote for the candidate who will not win, but a vote for whom will be taken as endorsement of perhaps only one position I don’t care much for.
A vote for Sarvis over Cuccenelli should be seen as doing exactly what our votes should do; say “Next time the Republicans ought to try to come closer to a Sarvis than a Cuccinelli, in their nominating process. Because if they don’t, they will once again have to get along without my vote.”
The problem, Mike, was that the line up was really
D
R
DL
being as the largest contributor to the Sarvis campaign was a Texas billionaire obama bundler. Does that help you get a clearer picture of what went down there?
I just investigated that claim (to a point) after someone elsewhere made it, and here is what I found:
For what it is worth, it seems traceable only to loon Glenn Beck’s “The Blaze,” mysteriously cited as a “Libertarian” source as the story is picked up readily by conservative outlets.
But what it actually says is, that at some time Joe Liemandt, a donor to Democratic causes, gave $150,000 to a Libertarian Booster (?) PAC, and that PAC gave something over $11,000 to (surprise!) a Libertarian candidate (Sarvis) for ballot access. I would argue it is unlikely that someone would give $150K if only $11K+ was to be used, if the purpose had been just to target Cuccenelli. Had the balance of the $150K been used for, say, political ads, then the charge would be more plausible.
Also, Sarvis and the Libertarian PAC already had more than enough money on hand for the $11K ballot access effort; it is not like Liemandt’s donation made it possible. So again, what is implied does not seem to add up.
It makes a damn swell story for people aching to make excuses for losing, who can’t find enough about their own candidate and campaign to be outraged over, but it loses quite a bit upon analysis.
I get that the L was a fake. That’s irrelevant since everyone who voted for him knew he wasn’t going to win anyway, yet they still chose him over either of the other two. That doesn’t say much for the other two.
This really shouldn’t be difficult to grasp.
People took time out of their day and headed to the polling place to vote for someone who they knew wouldn’t win. They clearly didn’t want either of the other candidates to win or they would have voted for them. Nobody stole any votes. Votes are earned, and the fake Libertarian who definitely wasn’t going to win earned enough to potentially upset the election. Perhaps his only redeeming quality was that he wasn’t the D or R candidate, since they both pretty much sucked.