GOP arguing why they lost VA gov’s race in Virginia feels like the 50's debate about"who lost China"

[DonViejo]

Virginia Is for Losers

The blame game over Ken Cuccinelli’s failed race is really a fight over the future of the Republican Party.

By John Dickerson

The argument among Republicans over why they lost the governor’s race in Virginia feels like the debate over "who lost China" in the 1950s. Did Republican candidate Ken Cuccinelli lose because he was too conservative? Or, did he lose because the Republican establishment didn't support him? This isn’t just a matter of scapegoating. Every losing campaign has its fights and finger pointing (and the authors of Double Down would like to thank you for that), but sometimes it just stops there. There was no greater meaning to take away from the postgame tussle after Hillary Clinton's primary loss in 2008. This blame game is important, however, because it is really a fight about the Republican Party’s strategy for the future.

In the first round, the existing participants in the Republican internal party debate have pretty much played to type. Karl Rove, who is pushing the party to nominate "electable" candidates, writes that Cuccinelli's loss shows that GOP candidates need to unite the party’s factions instead of alienate them. The New York Times suggests Cuccinelli’s loss has reanimated the push to end the highly partisan nominating conventions that lead to people like the former Virginia attorney general being picked in the first place. Exit polls show that 50 percent of Virginia voters found Cuccinelli too extreme. Activist conservatives, on the other hand, blame the Republican Governors Association and the Republican National Committee for not putting enough money into the race. The Tea Party crowd claims the establishment sold the Tea Party out again, just as it did during the government shutdown when moderate GOP senators didn't have the guts to stand and fight over Obamacare.

Same whine, new bottles, right? No. There is one important contributing factor to the loss that both sides agree on. Rove argued in his Virginia election post-mortem that the government shutdown contributed to Cuccinelli's defeat. Cuccinelli campaign strategist Chris LaCivita agrees: The government shutdown distracted from talking about the failure of Obamacare’s launch. “There was definitely a national mood that was moving, that is moving, that is continuing to move against the White House and the Affordable Care Act. And I can’t help but ask myself, what would have been the result had he had five weeks of this discussion instead of just two and a half?”

LaCivita would like to have October back, and spend the whole month beating Obamacare like a drum. Instead, more than half of the month was spent on the shutdown and the parlor game of whether the Republican Party would drive the country over the debt limit brink. The Cuccinelli camp can’t know for sure whether this strategy would have changed the election’s outcome. They didn’t do a poll in the last few weeks of the race and have no data to support their view. But the numbers don’t matter among Republicans who believe highlighting Obamacare’s failures is a campaign winner—the only question left to settle is the tactical wisdom or stupidity of the government shutdown.

full article
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2013/11/ken_cuccinelli_s_failed_virginia_campaign_the_blame_game_and_the_future.html?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr:content

[savalez]

1. I think he wasn't extreme enough.

[Heather MC]

2. How much would they pay me to explain it to them

You lost because you didn't win enough votes. And you were never going to win enough votes no matter how much you cheated

To Quote Dave Chapell "Pay me bitches"