The GOP Still Hasn't Figured Out How to Get On With the Tea Party - By Charlie Cook

[DonViejo]

Tuesday's election results ensure that the battle over the faction's role in Republican politics will rage on.

Charlie Cook By Charlie Cook
November 7, 2013

Postmortems of odd-year and special elections often suffer from overly broad generalizations that push a particular narrative while overlooking any arguments that get in the way. The instant analyses also tend to suffer from the impulse to extrapolate results and divine great meaning, as if they foreshadow the future. I’ll try to avoid both temptations in offering a few observations about Tuesday’s outcomes.

Was Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli an ideal candidate for the GOP to run in an increasingly purple state? No, but neither was Terry McAuliffe for the Democrats. Cuccinelli was very strong among the most ideological of Republicans, but less so with the old-line Republicans, the members of the establishment and the business community who were uncomfortable with his long-standing and very strong emphasis on social and cultural issues. In the end, these social issues hurt Cuccinelli in the rapidly growing suburbs of Northern Virginia. Conversely, McAuliffe was very strong among the Democratic Party establishment but less popular among the more ideological Left in the party. The 2008 split between supporters of Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama is an apt comparison for describing the internal division that McAuliffe faced early on. But liberals’ antipathy toward Cuccinelli repaired that rift.

Neither Cuccinelli nor McAuliffe had a natural claim on voters in the ideological middle. Looking at polls from late spring and early summer, Cuccinelli led in some, McAuliffe was ahead in others, but the race was pretty even at that time. Starting in mid-July, however, the pattern changed dramatically. After a July 8-14 poll by Roanoke College that put Cuccinelli ahead by 6 percentage points, the next 38 polls leading up to Election Day had McAuliffe ahead, some by just 1 or 2 points, others by 10 or 12 (one by 15 points). McAuliffe’s consistent lead in the surveys began at roughly the same time as Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell’s ethics problems. Combine a weak candidate with a governor under criminal investigation, and it was more than the campaign could withstand. If Cuccinelli were a less threatening candidate to suburban swing voters, he might have survived McDonnell’s problems, but he wasn’t and thus couldn’t. Both sides ran very competent campaigns, it should be noted, and neither candidate committed any significant faux pas.

Did the disastrous rollout of Obamacare hurt Democratic candidates, dampen party enthusiasm, and cost McAuliffe and other Democrats on the ticket momentum and support? It’s certainly plausible, maybe even likely, but it is unclear to what extent that was the case. The exit-poll results aren’t decisive on this point, and while public polling suggested that in the last week or two of the race Cuccinelli gained more points out of the previously undecided column than did McAuliffe, it’s not absolutely clear that Obamacare caused the shift.

full article
http://www.nationaljournal.com/the-cook-report/the-gop-still-hasn-t-figured-out-how-to-get-on-with-the-tea-party-20131107

[gopiscrap]

1. I think that the tea party might very well morph into a third party