Virginia Ping! If you want on or off the Virginia Ping List, please freepmail me.
Posted on 02/04/2013 11:26:38 PM PST by neverdem
The Republican attorney general's controversial comments in his upcoming tome could come back to haunt him in the Virginia governor's race.
Pragmatic Republicans looking to hang onto the governorship in Virginia have been hoping that their nominee, state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, would tailor his outspoken conservative views for a more-moderate Old Dominion electorate. But based on excerpts released from his new book, Cuccinelli is making no apologies — and comes out swinging hard against all government entitlement programs.
According to reports from Politico and The Washington Post, Cuccinelli doesn’t limit his criticism of government programs, but also is skeptical of its role as a provider of last resort.
One telling anecdote: Cuccinelli’s recounting of a time in the 1970s when his uninsured mother was hospitalized for six months. They got help from extended family and friends as Cuccinelli’s father worked to pay off the bills. “It was a painfully difficult time for my parents, but despite the hardship, the last thing my parents thought about doing was asking the government to force other people to pay our bills,” an excerpt in the Politico report said.
Cuccinelli also writes that entitlement programs have been used to make people dependent on the federal government, and while maintaining the constitutionality of Medicare and Social Security, writes that President Bush used the 2003 Medicare expansion and "taxpayer dollars to buy seniors’ votes for his 2004 reelection campaign, pure and simple."
The book, being released on Feb. 12, is the first major event that could shape the trajectory of the Virginia gubernatorial race. The book has opened up a clear line of attack for his Democratic rival Terry McAuliffe, who is trying to cast Cuccinelli as anti-Medicare and anti-Social Security. McAuliffe campaign officials say they expect it to use it to attack Cuccinnelli as being out of the mainstream.
The campaign released a statement Friday describing Cuccinelli’s remarks on Medicare and Social Security as “demeaning to hardworking families.”
“Our next Governor must put aside this kind extreme ideological rhetoric that divides Virginians and insults everyone who has worked hard and paid their taxes,” McAuliffe said.
For its part, the Cuccinelli campaign is accusing Democrats of “cherry picking” portions of the book and making a “baseless attack" on Medicare and Social Security.
“When the full book is available, voters will realize that the statement was taken out of context and that Mr. Cuccinelli supports Medicare and Social Security,” said campaign spokesman Jahan Wilcox.
When asked for a copy of the book in order to get the fuller context, Wilcox responded that it will be available for purchase on Feb. 12.
In a case of curious timing, Virginia Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, a Republican exploring a run as an independent, this week came out in support of Medicaid expansion so long as it includes federal waivers to let the state reform the program. That’s a reversal of his earlier position. The announcement suggests he’s politically attuned to the implications of Cuccinelli’s comments and is looking to draw a contrast with his GOP rival.
“This is early. The whole race hasn’t formulated yet,” said former Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, a moderate Republican. “Some of it depends on what the whole Republican ticket is going to look like. Is it going to be a broad-based ticket representing the whole party?… Will the Republican base fracture, or will the attorney general be able to put the whole coalition together?”
Davis also pointed to Gov. Bob McDonnell's ability to win in the state despite news breaking during the campaign on the contents of his master's thesis, in which he wrote that working women were "detrimental" to families. One big difference, however: McDonnell’s thesis was written nearly two decades before his 2009 campaign.
Playing in Cuccinelli’s favor: In Virginia, voters traditionally vote against the president’s party in gubernatorial elections. Davis said atmospherics and President Obama’s approval ratings will be as important as Cuccinelli’s writings come November.
Also, Cuccinelli has always been conservative, and he’s won a number of times before in Virginia. It wouldn’t be wise to write-off his prospects, even if the book does damage. “A lot of Democrats have gone to the graveyard underestimating Ken Cuccinelli,” Davis said.
Based on the truly enormous lines to vote here in Arlington, I assure you those votes weren’t manufactured.
There are just simply millions of people in Northern Virginia with an utterly different and incomprehensible world view than you. It’s not a very realistic strategy to just scream “vote fraud” and try to pretend those people don’t exist.
Virginia voters traditionally voted for a Republican for president, too. But that's gone out the window for the last two elections. We're at a point now where nobody really knows what the Virginia voters will do, especially if Bolling runs as an independent.
Of course they exist. But so does MASSIVE fraud. Add up the votes in suspicious districts, O say, those many well-documented precincts that had close to 100% (or embarrassingly in some few cases, better!) turnout in 2012, with '0' votes for Romney-Ryan, or the many instances where more votes than registrations are counted.
To the ever-present "urban fraud," you can now add "virtual" latino voters, duly registered, issued "absentee ballots" in vast numbers and are voted as often and in as many precincts as needed.
You are talking people. I am talking real numbers that only peripherally involve the people who actually identify themselves with the Left. Instructional history exercise: research "Loretta Sanchez," or "Rossi in the State of Washington," or "The Election of Al Franken." Or even "The Problem of Multi-State Registration."
However, I strongly disagree with him about the centerpieces of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. They are not at all constitutional.
James Madison, the father of our Constitution, said it best:
"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents." "The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government."
The institution of these agencies and programs was the turning of our form of government on its head. It was, in fact, a coup d'etat.
We will never restore or preserve this free republic unless we find the will to overturn the New Deal.
OK, I get you...
But if you consider, for example, what happened in Allen West’s district (which is going to court, by the way) and in FL in general - not reporting Miami-Dade until after the results in the Panhandle are reported or Philly voter misconduct or Franken’s ability to conjure up votes and incidents like that.
Yes, it sounds paranoid but I think seeing long lines at the polls and thinking it translates to overwhelming support for Obozo and his policies might be a little naive..
Don’t you wish someone would have conducted a thorough investigation so one of us could be proven wrong?
On a personal note, my precinct’s voting place was changed from a fire station to a black Baptist church the last few elections...no explanation for this...nice place, nice people...but this last election had my neighbor getting phone calls from the NAACP for the first time ever...his phone number is unlisted...interesting, no?
And not to pile on too much more...
I would have felt so much better about your discussion points if you had said, “....incomprehensible world view than US....”
Rather than, “...YOU...”.
Virginia Ping! If you want on or off the Virginia Ping List, please freepmail me.
I know....what was I thinking? I was applying how we’d vote to “the other side”. As Spock would say, “Totally illogical”.
One last post to you then I’ll leave you alone, FRiend...
How about this:
http://dailycaller.com/2013/02/05/joe-biden-tells-david-cameron-re-election-was-easy-nothing-to-it/
Granted, it’s Biden but kind of interesting he’d say this....
The Republican sheriff of Yazoo, Mississippi, received a brief flurry of national attention when insurgent white Democrats took over the county government and forced him to flee. (WIKI)
================================================
FREEPER ACTION MEMO In 1875, Hiram Revels, a Mississippi Republican--and the first African-American US Senator--wrote to then-Pres Ulysses S. Grant denouncing Northern invaders into the post-Civil War south for manipulating the Black vote for personal benefit, and for keeping alive wartime hatreds. (WIKI)
Conservatives need to get others to do the heavy lifting---someone with integrity, like Fla Cong Allen West (not reelected). Cong West needs to do the following:
(1) decry the agitation and intimidation tactics being used by para-military Democrats,
(2) expose Dems using hatemongering for personal gain,
(3) emphasize the illegalities WRT threatening candidates for public office , and,
(4) precipitate investigations into Dems' para-miltary tactics.
Even more proof why Ken Cuccinelli is the RIGHT CHOICE for Governor!!!
Republicans need a few Lee Atwater types. He may have been despicable in many ways, but he sure knew how to fight the Dems game. The only halfway decent fighters in the GOP today are good only at infighting. Pathetic.
You can say that again. So many pubbies are natural wusses.
I tend to align with your viewpoint that it (ss) is an obligation, but I recall reading about the case of Fleming vs. Nestor (1960) wherein the USSC ruled that there is no contractual obligation in the way social security was set up that constitutes a contractual obligation of the government to pay benefits. They basically ruled that payments into social security were a form of tax, and that disbursements were essentially welfare. That is for social security. Yet today things like food stamps, aid to families with dependent children (i.e., “welfare”), are viewed as “rights”. The whole damned system has gone mad.
Lee later apologized to Dukakis for running a successful campaign against the Democrat. He died not too long afterwards. GHWB did not attend Atwater’s funeral.
In 1983 during the Reagan administration, both parties agreed that there should be a cap on Social Security at the 90% level (that is at the level where only 10% of all income earned was above that level). Unfortunately, they have been increasing the cap figure by the Cost of Living figure, but earnings at the upper levels instead of increasing by 2 or 3% a year have typically been jumping something like 16% a year. Thus for a number of years the cap has hovered around the 85% level and even lower now. If this cap were restored to the 90% level, this would significantly increase the money going to Social Security and it was a bipartisan agreement. So SS would be saved for a number of years in spite of baby boomers.
I’m liking this guy. The one thing he cannot do is “apologize”.
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