Klemperer ?
Posted on 11/14/2005 12:45:11 AM PST by Crackingham
In 2004, the new hotbed of Republican voters was the outer suburbs, the so-called exurbs on the distant outskirts of a central city, packed with tract housing, strip malls, chain stores, a megachurch or two, and thousands and thousands of middle class and lower middle class families. President Bush romped in the exurbs. He won 97 of the 100 fastest-growing counties in America--most of them exurbs--and piled up a 1.72 million vote advantage over John Kerry.
From the governor's election in Virginia last week, there's a bit of evidence that the Republican grip on the exurbs may be loosening. Jerry Kilgore, the Republican candidate for governor, lost Loudoun and Prince William counties, exurbs that Bush won handily last year and that Republican Mark Earley, who lost the governor's race in 2001, won by a wide margin.
The evidence of a serious falloff is not overwhelming, for sure. The two counties are unique in that they're on the fringe of Washington, D.C., and thus voters may have been influenced by national trends and the floundering of President Bush and congressional Republicans. Moreover, these voters may have been affected by the coverage of the governor's campaign in the Washington Post, which was highly favorable to the Democratic candidate, Tim Kaine, and hostile to Kilgore.
Still, the outcome in Loudoun and Prince William should be alarming to Republicans. Located west of Washington, Loudoun is the second fastest-growing county in the country. Kilgore lost Loudoun by 51 percent to 46 percent. A year earlier, Bush did 10 points
better, and in 2001 Earley's vote topped Kilgore's by seven points. The numbers in Prince William, south of Washington, were slightly better. Kilgore was defeated by 50 percent to 48 percent, slipping five points below Bush and four below Earley.
So what's the cause of the dip? It's largely a matter of guesswork. Ken Mehlman, the Republican national chairman, thinks independent voters, deciding at the last minute, went with "how they felt things were going." And since polls show a large majority of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, they voted for the opposition party's candidate, Kaine. They turned with the political wind.
Maybe, but I think there are two better explanations for the Republican retreat in the two exurban counties. First, there's the immigration issue. Late in the campaign, Kilgore played up his opposition to government aid for illegal immigrants. He did so in TV ads and speeches, criticizing Kaine for supporting taxpayer-financed services for illegals and their families. The tagline in his TV spots was: "What part of 'illegal' does Tim Kaine not understand?"
The question is not whether Kilgore was indulging in blatant immigrant-bashing. He wasn't. The question is whether his emphasis on illegals might have been seen as unfriendly to immigrants, especially by the large immigrant communities in the two counties. An exit poll might have answered this question, but none was conducted.
Nevertheless, Republican consultant Jeffrey Bell insists the immigrant issue hurt Kilgore. Attacks on immigration work in theory but often not in practice. Bell says criticizing illegal immigrants has backfired in every campaign he's familiar with that emphasized the issue. Indeed, the Kilgore campaign was slipping in the polls late in the campaign when he was highlighting the immigrant issue.
"They overplayed the immigrant issue," says Mark Rozell, professor of public policy at George Mason University in northern Virginia. "They may have caused a counter-mobilization by people who were offended by the ads."
Rozell says he was "stunned" when he heard a Kilgore radio ad on illegal immigrants on a classical music station in Washington. "Is that the demographic their ads were supposed to appeal to?" he says. In all likelihood, Rozell says, the ads appealed only to Republicans already committed to vote for Kilgore.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie.Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
Klemperer ?
Sorry, I don't get it ???????
Not a Hogan's Heroes fan, I take it ?
You could see this coming.
Thanks to low interest rates and the housing boom, the parasites are escaping the cities but voting the same way (Democrat) they did when they were destroying their cities. In other words, they fouled their nests and now they're fouling everybody else's.
No; I guess not. Sorry
"Colonel Hooooooooooogan? Are you meddlink with ein election again?"
I know NOTHING! NOTHING!
Democrat Mark Warner is very popular (75% approval rating _) in VA, so it's natual to an extent they'd stay with his chosen successor..However, calling Warner a Dem is a misnomer..ideologically, he'd be in the middle of the GOP House caucus..
That makes it two lousy Republican campaigns in a row, doesn't it?
Kilgore's campaign stunk up the place. I would NEVER vote for a Rat at this point, but even I found Kaine's lying campaign and disingenuous ads more appealing than Kilgore's.
Also Warner has been a pretty stealthy Rat and not too bad a governor.
IMHO, can't read much into Kilgore losing. At the state level, the Republican party in Virginia is still trying to recover from previous debacles (Gilmore, Early, etc.).
You are right on the money. You can't look to party affiliation in every race. Warner was a better candidate than Earley, but Earley ran an OK campaign and did pretty well.
Kilgore was an unappealing individual who was only known to Virginians for an unfortunately whiny voice and support for executions. He then ran relentless attack ads aimed at issues of conscience- the death penalty again, support for the 2nd amendment.
He needed to run on tax-cutting and school standards (Republican winning issues as opposed to social dividing issues). He thought the social issues would break his way. They broke against him.
Most Republicans generally favor Kilgore's positions, but not all do. Republicans often vote their conscience and Kilgore lost the votes of Republican death penalty opponents and gun control advocates. Kaine stayed away from the issues and let Kilgore's own ads destroy him.
The state Republican party nominated Kilgore out of groupthink (like Oliver North). They paid the price.
Conservatives should be impatient with this setback, but Virginia is still a conservative state.
I thought these exurbs are more of an upper middle class phenomenon.
The question is whether his emphasis on illegals might have been seen as unfriendly to immigrants, especially by the large immigrant communities in the two counties.
So it's not about exurbs at all but race/immigration.
Attacks on immigration work in theory but often not in practice.
It's true. Part of the Pavlovian conditioning of the population that even though 3/4ths of a population might say immigration is excessive in polls they won't vote for even reasonable controls for fear of being labeled racist. Voting is where the rubber hits the road and they can't bring themselves to incur the disapproval of their masters. There's a real Stockholm-type of psychological dependence and submission going on there.
Roads are the BIGGEST issue here in NoVA - start the research there ...
Concur..people vote the top OF THE TICKET..
Instead of "Revolt of the Exurbs", this should be called
"Urban Vomitus".
What is happening is that urban liberal Dems, having soiled their own pigsytes and created a totally unlivable mess, are vomiting themelves forth into the suburbs and even rural areas, bring the same pestilence that created so much damage in the cities with them.
This is one of the reasons I support no growth in the suburbs and countryside. Keep the Dmes locked up in the cities where they belong, and where, hopefully,, their own twisted philosophies will make an end of them.
Another exurber for Bush.
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