Free Republic

Reagan conservative Ken Cuccinelli lost his bid for the Virginia governorship because the patrician, turf-protecting Republican Party establishment in his state wanted him to lose. It's really that simple.  Cuccinelli campaign strategist Chris La Civita suggested on election night Tuesday that the federal government's partial shutdown last month may have hurt his candidate in parts of Virginia where many federal employees and contractors live. He also suggested that Cuccinelli could have won if he had received more money from national GOP sources, which he said dried up as of Oct. 1. "There are a lot of questions people are going...

Anti-gunners across the nation are reveling in the victory of Terry McAuliffe in the hotly-contested Virginia Governor’s race with claims that McAuliffe’s “F” rating by the National Rifle Association indicates the American people are rejecting the so-called gun agenda. But in reality, the McAuliffe victory proves once again the powerful roll that money plays in political elections in our fair nation. McAuliffe was expected to easily win the election, but ended up barely squeaking out a victory on election night despite dramatically outspending his opponent. In the days leading up to the Virginia election, McAuliffe outspent Republican challenger Ken Cuccinelli...

"You know what makes a good loser?" Ernest Hemingway once wrote. "Practice." And if you know anything about Virginia's gubernatorial race, then you understand that the real loser wasn't conservative Ken Cuccinelli. It was the Republican Party. Late last night, politicos clacked away at their computers, performing their own postmortems on a race that proved to be more unpredictable than anyone expected. Double-digit leads, the ObamaCare effect, gender gaps -- they all managed to turn the media's foregone conclusions about Democrats' invincibility on their head. Despite his deadbeat party, lackluster fundraising, a third-party candidate (funded, it turns out, by Obama...

The far right, feeling the sting of Ken Cuccinelli’s defeat in the Virginia gubernatorial race, have decided to blame the Republican National Committee. Understand it was the Virginia right wing that insisted on a closed convention and chased Bill Bolling out of the race. Understand that right-wing talk show hosts often implore their listeners not to give money to the RNC. And further understand that no poll before the final couple of days showed the race close. So why exactly is the RNC to blame?

For the record, I do not know the Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus. I'm told he's a nice person, and I understand shares membership in a collegiate fraternity. But nice guys with lots of experience as president of a student body or as an aide to some state legislator or even as a lawyer for the national GOP -- all of which he has accomplished, just won't cut it anymore. The RNC and its many "affiliated groups" gave up on GOP nominee for governor of Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. They likely relied on the same old bunch of...

Leaders of the Republican establishment, alarmed by the emergence of far-right and often unpredictable Tea Party candidates, are pushing their party to rethink how it chooses nominees and advocating changes they say would result in the selection of less extreme contenders. The push comes as the national Republican Party is grappling with vexing divisions over its identity and image, and mainstream leaders complain that more ideologically-driven conservatives are damaging the party with tactics like the government shutdown. The debate intensified on Wednesday after Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, the deeply conservative Republican candidate for governor of Virginia, lost a close race...

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...

Tea Party favorite Ken Cuccinelli, abandoned by the Republican establishment as too "extreme" to win in Virginia, crushed Democrat Terry McAuliffe among independent voters by 9 percentage points, 47%-38%. The key to McAuliffe's victory was that the Democrat--assisted by the ruthless data-mining operation that fueled Barack Obama's 2012 re-election--turned out his party's base, while conservative voters were divided. Cuccinelli's winning margin among independent voters was only slightly lower than Mitt Romney's 12-point margin in 2012. Romney also lost the state, however, after failing to bring conservative voters to the polls and mounting a lackluster a get-out-the-vote operation that was badly...

A long and contentious campaign ended late Tuesday with a narrow victory by Terry McAuliffe. But as Wednesday dawned, many Virginians may still not know what to expect from the next governor, since negative ads during the campaign seemed to crowd out both candidates' platforms. McAuliffe likely has some challenges ahead. He's never held public office, and many Virginia lawmakers perceive him as an outsider. What's more, Republicans maintained their strong majority in Virginia's House of Delegates, which means McAuliffe will have to figure out how to cooperate with the GOP if he has any hope of success. We talked...

. Fellow Conservatives at Free Republic, It's a bittersweet moment that we face today. First, I offer a champagne toast to the patriot Ken Cuccinelli for his outstanding effort in Virginia. Second, I am quietly outraged by the numerous reports today that the Republican Party deliberately WITHHELD available funding for the Ken Cuccinelli campaign ... and instead gave it to the Chris Christie campaign, which didn't even need the money. E-mails and text messages have become the defacto form of communication in our moment of history. However, there is no substitute for a simple hand-addressed and written note. A hand-composed...

Every week, New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich talks with contributor Eric Benson about the biggest stories in politics and culture. This week: Christie's 2016 prospects, Rand Paul's Jonah Lehrer problem, McAuliffe's underwhelming victory, and De Blasio's first challenges. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie won a landslide reelection yesterday, significantly outperforming the national Republican Party among black, Hispanic, and female voters. Christie has been viewed as too moderate to win a Republican presidential primary, but he's popular, pragmatic, and has lots of momentum. Is he the 2016 GOP front-runner? There is no front-runner for 2016. But the excessive valuation given...

<p>Both Reince Priebus and Mark Levin were on WMAL Tuesday…but not at the same time. RNC Chair Reince Priebus was asked to respond to comments Mark Levin has made that they’ve done next to nothing to support Cuccinelli in the VA. Gov. race. Priebus basically said that the RNC has spent 3 million on their ground game in VA which doesn’t just help Cuccinelli, but also other candidates on the Republican ticket.</p>

This is a map that I pulled from the Virginia State Board of Election site showing the unofficial results of the governor's race county by county, and city by city. Red = Cuccinelli, Blue = McAuliffe. The annotations and commentary are my own analysis of how McAuliffe managed to win this contest.

Ken Cuccinelli lost the governor's race in Virginia, but here's the thing — he didn't lose by that much. Only 3 points. Because the race came so close, far right Republicans blame the GOP establishment for not doing more to give Cuccinelli a boost. The Republican National Committee put $9 million into Gov. Bob McDonnell's campaign in 2009. This year, Cuccinelli got $3 million. Cuccinelli "was betrayed by his own party," Rush Limbaugh told listeners on Wednesday afternoon, but the betrayal was not a surprise. Limbaugh said: "In Virginia the GOP simply didn't want a Tea Party candidate winning there....

If we learned one thing from Election Day 2013, it's that we learned nothing at all. The most-watched races of the day left in their wake a myriad of mixed messages and differing priorities that demonstrate no clear trend and no unified direction driving America forward.

One of the Democratic Party’s most accomplished operatives and ally of Hillary Clinton beat conservative Ken Cuccinelli in Virginia, ushering in two new post-election certainties. First, we will hear from Democrats how this means the repudiation of the anti-Obamacare efforts by Republicans and the endorsement of the President’s “stay the course” message. Second, the victory of Democrat Terry McAuliffe means that Republicans had better nominate candidates far more moderate in the 2014 election season, now begun. To be more specific. We conservatives – and this writer is certainly one – made two major mistakes and we had better learn our...

I join a massive number of republican-voting citizens who have had it with the likes of you all, from Reince Priebus on down. You say you represent the party of small government and pro-family values. You act anything but. We are sick and tired of the party’s move to the left and to your empty promises of support for the party’s planks. We have tried to stay on, especially since the election of more democrats is killing our country, its culture, morality, and its economy. The democrat party is the anti-America Marxist party and you all seem to like their...

Breitbart News has confirmed that much of the credit for Terry McAuliffe’s narrow 47.9 percent to 45.5 percent victory over Republican Ken Cuccinelli in Tuesday’s election is attributable to a $4 million donation the McAuliffe campaign gave to the Democratic Party of Virginia, which used those funds to run a highly effective ground game for the party’s full slate of candidates. Ashley Bauman, press secretary for the Democratic Party of Virginia, told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview on Wednesday that "[w]hile we used that money [the $4 million donated to the Democratic Party of Virginia from the McAuliffe campaign]...

Democrat Terry McAuliffe won the Virginia governor’s race on Tuesday, in a surprisingly close victory over Republican rival Ken Cuccinelli -- who was heavily outspent and trailed in the polls for much of the race. With nearly all precincts reporting, McAuliffe was ahead with just 48 percent of the vote, to Cuccinelli’s 45 percent. Though McAuliffe previously held a double-digit lead, exit polls showed voters opposed to the federal health care law overwhelmingly backed Cuccinelli, helping him narrow the gap on Tuesday.

November 6, 2013 RNC: Hey, don’t blame us for Cuccinelli’s loss ALLAHPUNDIT ... Fun fact: The RNC spent $9 million to help Bob McDonnell win the governor’s seat four years ago. This year, in a much tougher election, they spent $3 million on Ken Cuccinelli, with Cooch so strapped for cash at the end that he had to abandon the D.C. media market the last two weeks. Not all of his money problems were the RNC’s fault — McAuliffe dominated Cuccinelli in fundraising (as expected) and centrist outside groups like the Chamber of Commerce ignored him — but the big...