Thread: REPORT: CHRISTIE REFUSED TO CAMPAIGN FOR CUCCINELLI

REPORT: CHRISTIE REFUSED TO CAMPAIGN FOR CUCCINELLI



by JOHN NOLTE 6 Nov 2013 2111 POST A COMMENT

Tuesday night and again Wednesday morning, NBC's Chuck Todd reported that New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie refused to campaign for Ken Cuccinelli, the Virginia Republican who narrowly lost his own governor's race to Democrat Terry McAuliffe. "They begged Christie, and you can make an argument," Todd said on Morning Joe. "That to bring a Chris Christie to Northern Virginia might have helped. But Chris Christie is worried about his own brand."

Part of Christie's brand problem, though, is his behavior during the closing days of last year's presidential campaign. After running one of the most divisive administrations and re-election campaigns in recent memory -- in the wake of Hurricane Sandy -- Barack Obama went to New Jersey seeking bipartisan credibility. And in the eyes of many, Christie went above and beyond to give it to him.
No one would have faulted Christie for putting politics aside to work with the president in the best interest of his state, especially after a devastating hurricane. But Christie appeared to go out of his way to aid and abet the president with photo-ops and praise that bordered on the melodramatic.
It certainly didn't help that all of this occurred just a few weeks after Christie's keynote address at Romney's convention, where the New Jersey governor seemed a lot more interested in helping himself and did next to nothing to make the case for our nominee.
In the closing days of yesterday's off-year election, Christie was coasting to easy re-election by margins in the twenties, and he is a mere two states away from Virginia. It would have cost Christie nothing more than six hours to do a Cuccinelli rally. But still he refused.
Christie's current brand might endear him to the Morning Joe bubble-boys, but they will turn on him, just as they did Romney, the moment he is a threat to a Democrat's quest for the Oval Office. In a presidential campaign, in both the primary and general elections, Christie needs the base to stand in long lines for him.
That is the brand Christie needs to worry about.
Had Christie taken just a half-day to stump for Cuccinelli, not only would that have helped wash the Sandy stain away; it might have actually made him a hero to the base for both defying the Morning Joe crowd and helping to drag Cuccinelli over the finish line.
Besides the obvious, here is one big difference between the Tea Party and the GOP Establishment: When the family fight is over, the Tea Party still fights for the family. We didn’t care for Mitt Romney, but once he was our guy, we fought our hearts out for him. And we would have done the same for the establishment choice had Cuccinelli not prevailed. In Virginia, though, after the family fight was over, the Establishment scooped up their marbles and crybabied all the way home.
From the looks of the exit polls and the massive money gap, that crybabying might have been the margin that handed Terry McAuliffe and, more importantly, the Clintons, a vital 2016 swing state.
If Christie wins the 2016 Republican nomination but loses Virginia, and with it the general election, last night should be remembered as the most short-sighted and spiteful cutting off of the nose to spite the Tea Party in years.
The GOP Establishment and Morning Joe crowd keep lecturing the Tea Party about how it is all about winning elections. In Virginia last night, that talking point was laid bare as nothing more than a lie.

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC


http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journal...for-cuccinelli

Republicans red-faced as Democrats paint Virginia blue

By Kenric Ward / November 6, 2013






By Kenric Ward | Watchdog.org Virginia Bureau
RICHMOND, Va. – Five takeaways from the Democrats’ big wins Tuesday in Virginia:
AP photo

VICTORY: With his son Jack, 20, looking on, Democratic Virginia Gov.-elect Terry McAuliffe addresses supporters Tuesday during his election victory party in Tysons Corner, Va.

• Obamacare isn’t that unpopular in the Old Dominion after all.
• A deep-pocketed Democrat cleverly used the Libertarian Party to fracture the GOP base.
• The gender gap is growing, in favor of Democrats.
• Money counts … again.
• Northern Virginia rules.

Democrat Terry McAuliffe broke a streak of nine straight elections in which the party occupying the White House lost the Virginia governor’s race.
In the final days, Republican Ken Cuccinelli framed the rough-and-tumble contest as a referendum on President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. Now that one of Obamacare’s leading opponents has been shoved to the sidelines, can Medicaid expansion be far behind for Virginia?
Also late in the campaign, news reports trickled out that a Democratic Party money bundler funded Libertarian Robert Sarvis’ way onto the ballot. Joe Liemandt’s ploy — whether orchestrated by the Democrats or not — provides a blueprint for the party to triangulate a way to victory without having to win 50 percent of the vote.
The so-called “war on women” thrashed the Grand Old Party. Though married women tended to vote GOP with their Republican husbands, unmarried females overwhelmingly voted for McAuliffe. It’s a mathematical impossibility to win while suffering a double-digit deficit among half the electorate.
McAuliffe’s $15 million edge in fundraising — with copious payback from Bill and Hillary Clinton — helped the Democrat demolish Cuccinelli on TV and power through a swarm of scandals over his business dealings ranging from GreenTech Automotive to ghoulish “death-put” bond investments on dying patients.
Virginia exhibited its political bipolarity again Tuesday. Only more so. Cuccinelli’s early lead, built in central and southern Virginia, steadily eroded as Northern Virginia’s precincts rolled in. The coalition assembled by Republican Bob McDonnell in 2009 crumbled this time, as Virginia’s most populous county, Fairfax, gave McAuliffe a 20-point cushion.
With additional votes from Hampton Roads, Democrats are repainting this once-red state blue.
Granted, the House of Delegates remains firmly in GOP control, able to block what Republican Party Chairman Pat Mullins calls “any crazy ideas” from McAuliffe. Also, a recount may affirm Republican Mark Obenshain’s tenuous 681-vote margin in the attorney general race (out of 2.2 million ballots cast).
But the Senate figures to remain evenly split and Democrats now dominate the statewide offices, including both U.S. Senate seats.
Facing such adversity, second-guessing and recriminations are in the Virginia GOP’s future.
Before Tuesday’s election, political scientist Quentin Kidd predicted, “I think the Republican Party erupts into a civil war 30 minutes after the polls close.”
The Christopher Newport University professor told NBC: “The (Bill) Bolling wing of the party would feel emboldened enough to say ‘We told you so, you idiots.’”
The lieutenant governor — a Chris Christie-type moderate (without the Jersey-style flamboyance) who dropped his gubernatorial bid when the state party apparatus opted for a closed nominating convention — said in a statement:
“As a Republican, I am deeply disappointed that our party has lost control of our state’s top two elected offices. There are clear lessons in these losses for the Republican Party.
“Going forward, we need to have an open and honest conversation about the future of our party and determine what we must do to reconnect with a more diverse voter base whose support is critical to political success in Virginia,” Bolling said.
Hard-line conservatives and tea partyers are in no mood for a scolding.
“Had Bill Bolling been nominated, Libertarians would have played a more prominent role in this race,” Fauquier County activist Mark Fitzgibbons told Watchdog.
Accomack County GOP official Dona Danziger said the party needs new blood at the local leadership level and stronger candidates.
“This is a problem that began back with John McCain,” she said.
Roger Stone, a veteran political consultant, said the splintered GOP will see a lot more of the Libertarians — like them or not.
“The Sarvis vote shows what will happen if Republicans cannot reconcile their social conservative wing with their economic conservative wing,” Stone told Watchdog from South Florida.
“In the old days, those who were in the party merely held the nose and voted for the party nominee because they had no where else to go. Now Libertarian candidates offer these voters an alternative.”
(This article was updated at 7:56 a.m. Thursday)
Kenric Ward is chief of the Virginia Bureau. Contact him at kenric@watchdogvirginia.org or at (571) 319-9824. @Kenricward

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Stop Scapegoating Third Party Candidates For Election Results You Don’t Like

November 7, 2013





Candidates such as Virginia’s Robert Sarvis weren’t spoilers after all


Even before yesterday’s election, Republicans were ready to blame Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli’s looming defeat to Democrat Terry McAuliffe on Libertarian Party candidate Robert Sarvis. “A Vote for Sarvis is a Vote for McAuliffe” argued one Cuccinelli supporter.
With the final count in, expect Republican anger at the Libertarian “spoiler” to grow exponentially. McAuliffe, who had enjoyed a double-digit lead at various points in during campaign, won with just 48 percent of the vote to Cuccinelli’s 46 percent. The Libertarian Sarvis ended up pulling almost 7 percent, far more than enough to tip the election the other way.


But to blame a major-party loss on third-party candidates is fundamentally mistaken. First off, it ignores data that the Libertarian pulled more votes from the Democratic candidate than he did from the Republican one—an exit poll of Sarvis voters showed that they would have voted for McAuliffe by a two-to-one margin over Cucinelli. Second, and far more important, it presumes that all potential votes somehow really “belong” to either Democrats or Republicans. That’s simply wrong and it does a real disservice to American politics.


Stop Scapegoating Third Party Candidates For Election Results You Don’t Like [continued]

http://libertycrier.com/stop-scapego...93c4-284711521