Margins of victory are also a matter of importance. Virginia has two liberal strongholds: the black community in the Tidewater and Piedmont areas, including cities like Richmond and Norfolk, and northern Virginia, where road names still honor Confederate heroes, but where the population is increasingly "Yankee" (in the current sense of people from north of the Potomac, whether British, Jewish, German, Italian, or Irish in ancestry). As voting patterns in northern Virginia begin to resemble those in Montgomery County, PA, Bergen County, NJ, and Westchester County, NY, the GOP must rely on increasing support from native white Virginians. If Democrats are able to gain incrementally in such areas by subtly appealing to Scots-Irish voters or by using conservative rhetoric, they can win.
The bottom line is that Republicans need to stick to a core conservative message: lower taxes, less government, secure borders, etc. The lame duck Administration needs to figure a way to achieve a military victory in Iraq in the next 18 months if it is to avoid an electoral debacle in 2008.