Posted on 06/08/2014 3:29:21 PM PDT by HokieMom
ROANOKE, Virginia — There’s no doubt Ed Gillespie is the underdog in the Virginia Senate race.
He’s polled well behind the man he’s trying to unseat, Democrat Mark Warner. The incumbent is the richest member of the Senate and a well-liked figure in the state. Meanwhile, many Virginians still don’t know who Gillespie is.
But Gillespie, a former Republican National Committee chairman, is an old hand at campaigns. And now that he’s the candidate, he insists he can pull off the upset.
“I assure you I have never analyzed a race more carefully than this one, and it’s a very winnable race,” the 52-year-old said after nabbing his party’s nomination at a convention this weekend.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/how-ed-gillespie-could-pull-off-an-upset-107569.html#ixzz345bW8Scf
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Thank you for your words of encouragement!
“I find it interesting that John Warner is endorsing Mark Warner in this race.”
That’s because Ed Gillespie is a conservative!
I personally know at least five Tea Party convention-goers in Roanoke who voted for Gillespie. This was not “RINO coronation as usual” and you surely MUST know that!
We’ve been losing badly in VA because of bad candidates from both the Tea Party and the RINOs. Both. George Allen was a disaster. Cuccinelli should have won, but his down ticket didn’t help. The conservative convention-goers chose poorly.
Immigration is not the only issue, and I sincerely hope amnesty never passes. But it surely WILL with Mark Warner, along with other horrible government grabs. Mark Warner votes with the socialist 97% of the time.
More hold your nose and vote for the lesser of two evils. This is not the way to win in the long term. Both parties have abandoned the American worker. Warner and Gillespie respond to their corporate paymasters.
More hold your nose and vote for the lesser evil. This is mot the way to win in the long term. Both parties have abandoned the American worker. Warner and Gillespie respond to their corporate paymasters.
Virginia is a purple state about to turn deep blue. NoVA has become the Detroit or Philadelphia when it comes to statewide races. And what happened last year when the Reps nominated a real conservative to be governor--Ken Cuccinelli? Bill Bolling, Boyd Marcus, and the Rep Mayor of Virginia Beach helped Terry McAwful to a narrow victory. When the GOPe doesn't get the nominee they want, they don't support the GOP candidate or fail to accept the nominated GOP candidate and run as independents like Murkowski. Frankly, I am sick of it. Voting for the lesser of two evils only works one way, i.e., when the GOPe is the nominee.
Right now we need to defeat Eric Cantor on Tuesday. The Dems haven't even nominated a candidate to oppose him. Dave Brat is the real conservative. Polls show him trailing 52-40. This despite being outspent by 15 to 1 by Cantor who refused to debate him.
It may look deep blue to you; however, the GOP now holds the majority in both chambers in the General Assembly.
I am pro-life, but it is not like the issue of immigration that is destroying this country for the past three decades. Unless we significantly reduce legal immigration, the Dems will be the permanent majority party. An amnesty will just hasten the process.
In 1990 15% of the population of Fairfax County was foreign-born; today it is 30%. I have worked as a poll watcher and election officer. We are being overwhelmed by the Dems in NoVA and each year it gets worse. We have 31,000 ESOL students in the FC public school system--about one in 6 students. The costs for the ESOL teachers alone are $104 million a year out of a $2.4 billion budget. One out of 4 of the 181,000 students receives free or subsidized meals. Fairfax County is one of the three richest counties in America. Property taxes continue to increase.
Crony capitalism is alive and well in the DC metro area. 7 out the 10 richest counties in the U.S. are in the DC metro area.
Nope, have voted for every Republican candidate since Ford in ‘76, but no more. Won’t support GOPe Rovian RINOs any longer; they’re no better than ‘RATS. Both two wings of the same political organization: The Big Government Lifetime Appropriators Party.
No, it is because Warner is a RINO,
“Why is it so hard to understand?”
There is nothing hard to understand. The RINOs have been using this senseless argument since forever.
We need to put ALL of our efforts into the primaries. In Texas, we had some majors pluses and some major minuses.
On the Plus side we will have a new Lt. Governor, Dan Patric. Someone who is a limited G’ment guy and Border protection first.
On the Minus side we have our current U.S. Senator John Wayne McCornyn (He is just like one of us). There was no credible opposition in the primary for this position. So Texas will be sending a BIG RINO back to the U.S Senate. Harry Reid will be happy as John Wayne McCornyn will use his cloture vote to give Harry Reid everything that Harry Reid desired. This is what John Wayne McCornyn has done in the past to great affect in keeping BIG G’ment dictatorship running
Yes, John Warner is a RINO. If Gillespie were a RINO, John Warner would support him. Since Gillespie is not a RINO, John Warner is supporting Mark Warner.
When I spoke to Rob Bell on Friday he said that he followed the rule that you vote for the most conservative candidate WHO CAN WIN. I know lots of Tea Party members. I sat on the COLA committee of the Tea Party Federation. Unfortunately, when it comes to immigration, there are Tea Party members who hold the libertarian view of the free movement of labor. They have no problem with immigration and would like to increase the numbers even more. They agree with the Chamber of Commerce and Rand Paul.
We’ve been losing badly in VA because of bad candidates from both the Tea Party and the RINOs. Both. George Allen was a disaster. Cuccinelli should have won, but his down ticket didn’t help. The conservative convention-goers chose poorly.
We have been losing badly due to rapidly changing demographics along with a fractured party. The GOPe wants to dictate the candidates, otherwise they don't support them with money--the mother's milk of politics. Bill Bolling walked away angry. Boyd Marcus longtime Rep political consultant who has worked with Cantor and George Allen defected and worked with McAwful hoping to be rewarded with a government appointment. The Rep Mayor of VA Beach, the largest city in VA, endorsed McAwful.
And I am sure you are referring to the nomination of EW Jackson to be Lt Governor. I didn't vote for him, but he won out a war of attrition. There were too many candidates splitting a number of better conservative candidates.
Immigration is not the only issue, and I sincerely hope amnesty never passes. But it surely WILL with Mark Warner, along with other horrible government grabs. Mark Warner votes with the socialist 97% of the time.
14 Rep Senators voted for the Gang of 8 bill and helped pass it easily. Why didn't any of the Virginia Republican candidates for Senator this year mention the “Gang of 8” bill and the fact that Mark Warner voted for it? I had one hour long face to face briefings on the immigration issue with Gillespie and Shak Hill. It is very disappointing to see them fail to use what I consider to be a winning issue.
Jeff Sessions is the only one who really understands what the GOP needs to do to change course and start winning again. The problem is that most of the GOP is bought and paid for by the corporate elites. If you really want to understand what is happening with immigration and the American worker read this piece by Jeff Sessions: Becoming the Party of Work How the GOP can help struggling Americans, and itself.
Or a piece I wrote for the American Thinker last August: Mass Immigration versus the Rights of American Workers
I would favor a Draft Jeff Sessions movement for President in 2016.
“I have told the president, there are some things we can work on together,” he said in the WTVR interview.
“We can work on the border security bill together, we can work on something like the kids,” he said referring to his proposal to offer some undetermined variety of amnesty to the children and youths of millions of parents who entered the country illegally.
Cantor says this just a few days before the primary on Tuesday. I guess you call that supreme confidence. He needs to be defeated.
It doesn’t matter how supposedly conservative members of the GOPe are on other issues: they’re for amnesty, which will make future conservative governing an impossibility.
We have two Dem senators and Obama has won VA comfortably the last two elections. Tim Kaine actually received more votes than Obama in 2012. Despite gerrymandering, it is going to be very hard to hang on to Frank Wolf's 10 District seat. It is all about turn out. If the Dems turn out in numbers they will win regardless of what the GOP does. We are outnumbered. I live in the belly of the beast--Fairfax County, which gave McAwful a 68,000 cushion. McAwful won the state by 56,000.
Believe me, Gillespie is a RINO. He is a Tom Davis Republican.
Tom Davis knew how to win and more good was accomplished than bad.
You don’t know Tom Davis. And the Tom Davis Republicans are destroying the GOP and ostracizing conservatives.
I don’t like that. I know some of what you say is true. I, for one, aren’t going to let them run me off.
The very conservative friends of mine had serious doubts that Shak Hill could win, because he was adamant on issues like health care, but at the same time inarticulate when explaining his position to the voters.
The Republican party in Virginia is a mess — I’m in the 7th district and there has been huge progress here. But there has been a serious dearth of activists and workers. That’s starting to change, now that some of the RINOs have been swept out of the house.
Yes - we’ve been working hard for Dave Brat, but people have felt ambivalent about the Senate candidates this year. If there had been a stronger, more articulate candidate than Shak Hill, that candidate would definitely have won. My five friends desperately wanted to feel confident in an alternative to Ed Gillespie, but in the end, they couldn’t.
Shak Hill was not a serious candidate nor were the other two. They were just token candidates. Each has their own motivation for running. Some do it for business reasons, others for ego, and others to help build a resume. They had no money and no organization.
The Republican party in Virginia is a mess — I’m in the 7th district and there has been huge progress here. But there has been a serious dearth of activists and workers. That’s starting to change, now that some of the RINOs have been swept out of the house.
We need to defeat Cantor. Dave Brat is a great guy and a real conservative. The Dems want Cantor reelected. They don't even have a candidate running against him. That should tell you something. I have been helping Brat.
Yes - we’ve been working hard for Dave Brat, but people have felt ambivalent about the Senate candidates this year. If there had been a stronger, more articulate candidate than Shak Hill, that candidate would definitely have won. My five friends desperately wanted to feel confident in an alternative to Ed Gillespie, but in the end, they couldn’t.
No serious candidate emerged because the fix was in. The Establishment with Mullins and Shaun Kenney made sure of that. The Soviet Politburo would be proud of the Kabuki dance that went on. None of the other candidates went after Gillespie, especially on immigration where he is really vulnerable. Gillespie is the Insider's insider. He will still probably lose. Warner will rip him apart and the Democrat machine in NoVA will turn out big numbers.
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