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.
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.