Oh. I do have to agree with you some adaher. Clearly if the GOP ran someone who was not TP, more traditional center Right, against this particular Democrat, they would have won, even being outspent. The Democrats will need to run very decent candidates in those potentially swingable districts to beat center Right Republicans in races in which they may even be outspent. It will be an uphill slog.
Wait, they wanted someone more conservative, and more outspoken on reproductive issues, than Cuccinelli? Seriously, I’m drawing a blank, here.
Yes, they definitely could have. They went out of their way not to do so and are trying to spin that as bad news for the Democrats, who won with a candidate whose main appeal was not being a draconian social conservative.
I’m not really seeing how Cooch is a Tea Partier. Aren’t the TP always telling us they are mostly concerned with economic issues? Cooch is functionally indistinguishable from, say, Strom Thurmond.
Only appeal. My god man, mcauliffe had absolutely everything stacked against him this election apart from money and still won. Making a close loss of what should’ve been an easy victory can’t be spun as a positive in any way.
Bring forth the lirpa.
And bring forth the popcorn. 
Yes. They’re not telling the truth. Notice all the abortion restrictions we’re seeing lately?
Well, as far as I recall, the Cooch avoided bleating about ‘legitimate’ rape, so he’s clearly a raging liberal on the abortion issue.
Problem for some of the center Rights though is that they did vote for the shut down and did not come out against it. They closed ranks with the TP elements and they will be able to be labelled as obstructionists to at least some degree. To which degree that attempt is successful they will lose when they otherwise would have won, even against decent Democratic opposition.
I’ve donated to DCCC. Have you? 
What’s Pope Benedict XVI (ret) up to nowadays?
And no, Doctor, you may not inject anyone with tri-oxycontin compound.
Lots of them voted to end the shut down, thus establishing themselves as traitors.
We’ll have the Koch’s pouring money into challenges on the TP side and Rove and business pouring money into the primary fights of the nearly sane ones, and it will be fun.
Not only have they not stopped digging, they appear to be bringing in the steam shovels.
Yeah. And this year I’m holding off until later, since whenever I do donate I get flooded with calls from the DNC, from the House Democrats, from the Senate Democrats, from the California Democrats, and for the Democratic Dogcatcher campaign committee.
So the new Conservative mantra is that money buys elections? :dubious:
Hookers and blow. Why do you think he retired?
Also, the MOE on the exit polls for that small slice of the electorate has to be absolutely huge. I assume we’re talking about [.copy.pdf"]this exit poll](http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2013/images/11/05/va.gov.exit.polls.1120p.110513.v2.final[1), but I can’t find any sample sizes.
So I’d call it not even a fluke; I’d call it a number that probably has such weak support that it’s not worth paying any attention to.
Well, there was that nutcase reverend that the GOP nominated for Lt Gov - he’d have qualified. But as I recall, that’s the one race of the three top races where the GOP took a genuine shellacking.
As usual, I’ll probably contribute to individual candidates.
But I did contribute to the DLCC this year - they’re the ones who support Dem candidates for state legislatures - because I knew picking good candidates at that level to contribute to isn’t something I’d ever have time to do, but what’s going on in the states demonstrates the importance of winning at that level.
Not that it did much good in Virginia, though.
PLEASE let them draw this conclusion.
God, there’s going to be 5000 PhDs in poli sci that come from studying this period.
And every thesis will conclude “What the FUCK?!”
This. Cuccinelli isn’t particularly far right of the center of the GOP anymore, and I can’t think of any other way that he’s all that much worse than your generic Republican running in 2014. How is he more than marginally worse than Paul Ryan or Eric Cantor or Aqua Buddha or any of those guys?
But McAuliffe was an unusually bad candidate for the Dems, a faceless, soulless, unprincipled corporate hack with minimal ties to the state he was running in. In the vast majority of competitive races, the Dems will be able to come up with candidates that have substantially more appeal to both the center and their base than McAuliffe had.