Christie is what passes for self-described moderates in the Republican Party. What he really is, is the third Mexican in the Mexican standoff we spoke about the other day. He maintains his “moderate” image by repeatedly slandering every Republican in sight. He has attacked most national Republican figures and the party in the abstract. And every time he wants applause, he further denigrates conservatism, Republicanism and everything in between. Moreover, despite claiming to be different, he's actually just an empty suit. To my knowledge, he has introducing nothing by way of an agenda except signing whatever the Democrats send him -- he'll veto one now and then, but so does Jerry Brown in California. Even his bombastic youtube moments which made him a conservative star ever so briefly are just for show and don’t match his policies. Further, he routinely appoints Democrats to key executive and judicial positions. All told, I can’t think of a single way in which he’s made New Jersey more conservative.
This is not what we need. This is true RINOism -- Democrat-lite combined with disloyalty. I would call him John McCain in a fatsuit, except that McCain actually does advocate conservative ideas and has at times come up with an original agenda... plus, McCain has limits on how nasty he gets about his own party. (And no, this is not to excuse McCain.)
This is why Christie is the wrong direction.
As I keep saying, we need a new way. We need a new agenda, one that appeals to the American public. A lot of people wrongly hear that as “go moderate,” but that is not at all what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that we need to start offering the public solutions to their concerns on education, healthcare, retirement, jobs, protecting the environment, protecting consumers, protecting small business and protecting people from predators, be they criminals, terrorists, abusive business practices or abusive government invasion of privacy or destruction of fundamental rights. We need to think of ways to bring our conservative free market, traditional values solutions to those issues. Chris Christie is not offering any of that. All Christie offers is the same infighting that is already going on, he just represents a different Mexican.
A lot of you may be asked about Christie by other conservatives. When they ask you, don't just call him a RINO, tell them that the problem with Christie is that he claims to stand for moderate ideas, but he really stands for nothing... he has no agenda, and he maintains his support through disloyalty. We don't need that.
I agree 100% with your assessment.
ReplyDeleteAndrew.....Here in VA, we now have the king of sleaze as our next Governor. Serious people here believe Cuccinelli could have won if we didn't have Ross Perot, sorry, Robert Sarvis (Dem funded Libertarian candidate) who took 7% of the vote. Many of those voters were the hard-core libs, some TP'ers and the anti-gov wing of the Repubs.
ReplyDeleteAlthough outspent significantly (and with very little support from the national Repub party) "Cooch" actually did pretty good, thus keeping him in the running for something else later on down the line.
Methinks the lack of support, combined with the Lib Party, Dem cash and constant negative media arrayed against him, all served to make this close. Unfortunately, when you have a boring (albeit competent) candidate running as a repub, we will lose. Cooch did NOTHING to counter the negative shite thrown at him. Why these pols can't grab a damn microphone and return fire with their own over the top misrepresentation of their opponents views consistently drives me nuts. That is the way you get media attention.
Like Smiley Virus stated after her VMA twerking...."Hey, any publicity is good publicity. I know how the game is played." Unfortunately, our side, in this case represented by Cooch, does NOT understand how the game is played and thinks they can win on the strength of their policy views. Idiots.
Patriot,
ReplyDeleteAccording to Fox's exit polls, the third party candidate drew as many Democratic votes as he did Republican ones.
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http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/11/06/mcauliffe-wins-virginia-governor-race/
Was the Libertarian candidate Sarvis a spoiler? In a word: no. In a straight two-way matchup, voters preferred McAuliffe to Cuccinelli by two points. That’s almost identical to the final outcome. In fact, Sarvis drew from independents and moderates, and took at least as many votes from the Democrat as the Republican.
Cuccinelli can’t blame outgoing Governor Bob McDonnell for his loss, as more Virginia voters approve than disapprove of his job performance (52-41 percent).
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Couple the low turnout with the relatively high support for the joke candidate, I'd say that VA voters weren't happy with their choices. Reminds me of the old sinking rowboat joke. 'If both candidates were in a sinking boat, who would be saved? The voters! '.
Andrew,
ReplyDeleteI think Chris Christie is the sort of guy one has to accept if one wants to win in a deep blue state and he's better than the alternative (no Democrat would have defunded Planned Parenthood) but I agree that he isn't a model the national party can follow (or for that matter a strong 2016 candidate).
Anthony....I can accept your premise of who voted for Sarvis. Basically, the usual suspects...some from the right, some from the left and some from the middle. Those upset with both candidates.
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen the final numbers, but I wonder what the turnout was for registered dems and repubs? I just didn't feel, or hear, any excitement for either candidate around here.
Unfortunately, I think it's another example of how the repub candidate and his views were shaped by the dems and media. If you are always asking the candidate about abortion at every campaign stop, the narrative becomes they're the "abortion" candidate. I really didn't hear the media asking McAuliffe about O'care at every campaign stop. More along the lines of..."What do you think of Cucinelli's stance on abortion?"
Tough game to win in, which is why I stated above we need candidates who know how to fight back against all this.
Patriot, while I agree to a point that the media constantly asking about abortion does frame a guy up as "the abortion candidate," I have to point out that they would stop asking if they didn't keep getting the answers they wanted. Now, I didn't follow VA beyond the last couple days, but just going by what I've seen in other races, "abortion" candidates tend to take those questions as a jumping-off point to delve into their own personal/religious beliefs. Even if he tumbles over backwards trying to explain that these are personal and not political views, the implication to someone only half paying attention is still that the guy wants his personal agenda in the capital. And, of course, constantly trying to assuage a vocal minority on the issue makes him look like "one of them."
ReplyDeleteFor anyone seeking an executive office, the answer to abortion questions should be easy: "That's for the people and the legislature to decide." and "I have no intention of blocking what the people want." Representatives have it pretty easy too, since they only need to stump a relatively small population. It's the Senators that have the tough job. They're really the only candidates that have to face such questions head-on. However, if I were a conservative running for such an office, I'd probably take the vague route and make pledges to do whatever I could to send it back to the States to decide.
And my answer to the classic follow up, "But Mr. Tryanmax, what do you personally believe?" would be, "I believe the people have a right to have their voices heard in the capital, and I intend to listen." The reporters could spin that as a dodge all they want, but it's still less damaging than a crazy comment. And if Obama has taught us anything, it's that people don't really care if they know what they're getting ahead of time.
"But Mr. Tryanmax, what do you personally believe?" would be, "I believe the people have a right to have their voices heard in the capital, and I intend to listen."
ReplyDeleteNice!!! This should go out like that scene in "Independence Day" where they send out that Morse coded message on how to defeat the aliens.
But, then again, candidates could also just lie and say anything they want and then deny that they ever said it. Then accuse their detractors as [fill in the blank]s. That works too.
Thanks LL. This really frustrates me that people see him as "moderate" when all he really is is a disloyal blowhard. He is not someone we want, not at all.
ReplyDeletePatriot, I need to disagree with the assessment that Cuccinelli did "good." Conservative Virginia, in a low-turnout off-year election, an election where the public should be primed to send Obama a message, where Obama tortured government contractors (i.e. all of Northern Virginia) just to try to make the shutdown painful.... should have been a blowout for Cuccinelli. As the Republican, he should have won by 15%. So losing by a couple should be sending up HUGE red flags were everything about the campaign.
ReplyDeleteAnd in that regard, look at the problems you point to. The Tea Party flakes abandoned him for the libertarian. The RINO win never gave him the money he needed to run ads. And the Religious Right wing either didn't turn out or isn't large enough to matter. This is the problem.
That said, you're right that Republicans need to learn to counter the attacks made on them. Unfortunately, that is the problem of not having a platform: there's nothing to fight back with except name calling.
Thanks, Bev! FYI, that is just me addressing a very specific issue. It is in no way a substitute for an actual platform as Andrew keeps reminding us. Without a platform to talk about, either the candidate has nothing to shift the conversation toward or the reporter has nothing else to ask about. Believe it or not, most reporters would be interested in a counter-proposal to their own guy's ideas, if only to pick it apart.
ReplyDeleteAnthony, I think you're right that Virginia voters didn't like either party, but the key to remember here is that Virginia is not a 50/50 state. And in a race with everything going in the Republican's favor, that's significant.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, the national media is calling this troubling for Obamacare today. They are right to read it that way. I think that's the only thing that made the race competitive.
Anthony, On Christie, I don't agree with the idea that Christie is the only type of Republican who can win in deep blue states. First of all, there's no reason to be disloyal. That's not a necessary part and it's ultimately self-destructive. But more importantly, while I agree that no hard-right candidate stands a chance, there is room for a constructive conservative.
ReplyDeleteAgain, consider the agenda in my book. I've gotten a good deal of feedback from moderate-liberals who actually liked most of it and said they would support a Republican if this was the Republican agenda. So I think the key in blue states is to offer a genuine agenda that appeals to the public, devoid of the stuff that turns the public off, and to stay relentlessly positive in delivering it.
Andrew.....Money comes from two heavily populated areas in VA - NoVA and Norfolk. NoVA is full of gov't/DoD workers and Norfolk is full of DoD. Both areas are rather liberal, unlike the rest of the state. Also, both are populated with relatively large historic dem voting blocs.
ReplyDeleteI don't know the results, but I would bet that both areas went for McAuliffe, along with the Richmond-Charlottesville corridor, while the rest of the state went for Cuccinelli. I could be wrong, but that;s how I see the state.
NoVA is like Westchester County in NY, Bucks County in PA and other wealthy counties in states that are traditionally pretty conservative outside the big cities. Those blue/red maps after an election are pretty amazing that show the vast majority of counties painted red, and small pockets of blue. Yet the blue candidate mostly wins the statewide and national races.
On Christie......His appeal is regional. His attitude and bombast fits in with that area of the country but turns off quite a few outside the region. I really don't see him as a national candidate. And his embrace of Obama right before the election, knowing that O needed to look presidential and caring, showed he's more concerned with Christie than party.
Patriot, Cuccinelli couldn't escape the abortion issue because (1) he made it a central idea of his campaign -- spoke about it at every stop until near the end and (2) his pro-life supporters started screaming that he wasn't talking about it enough, and they did so in the papers, which kept the issue alive and kept him talking about it.
ReplyDeleteThere's also the problem that far from the right-wing caricature of the other side, McAuliffe took a very rational abortion position -- maintain ban on last two terms, allow some restrictions. He was not an abortion without limits candidate. Those people are few and far between these days.
As for knowing how to fight back, that is true, but that's not the problem. The problem is that the current structure of the party makes victory impossible. Too many party (dis)loyalists seek to betray the party in each election and in their screaming they scare the public. That means we're doomed unless the electorate is overwhelmingly red.
And even in those places, like Colorado Springs, you're starting to see the Democrats make massive headway even against 2-1 registration. This is a systematic failure... it's not just a bad candidate or a failure to do one or two things.
Andrew.....Sure sounds like we're a split nation huh? Good thing it was never like this before in our history /s
ReplyDeleteBTW....What was Saint Reagan's stance on abortion?
tryanmax, I think that's right. The media is not the problem, the problem is the ammo our side hands over.
ReplyDeleteFor example, take the abortion issue. These candidates go speak at churches and at pro-life gatherings. They get up, they cry, they confess that abortion is the greatest sin EVER and they promise that, even though it's laughably impossible, they will ban abortion forever and ever the moment they take office. Heck, they might even lock up all those murderers who perform the procedure. Then the assembled crowd passes by the reporters and they're asked, "what did you think?" They answer with something like, "We're finally going to teach those sinful women a lesson."
The media runs out an points out the extreme abortion position and the anti-woman position. Suddenly, poll ratings start to fall.
With his rating falling, the candidate either doubles down and gets blown away or tries to "downplay the issue" by not leading off every single campaign stop with it. This angers the activists who rush to the MSM and accuse the candidate of selling out and not being part of the cult. The candidate then needs to assure those people that he really is one of them.
Meanwhile, the public is watching this thinking, "Who the f**k is this lunatic and why in the world would I want to vote for him?!"
The Tea Party people do the exact same thing: "I'm going to close the fed" and "I'm going to return us to the Qualoo standard" and "I'm never going to vote for a budget ever... 100% cut."
At the same time, the Democrats are going to places like Union halls leaving quotes like: "It's time to work for the common man again" and "Government needs to learn to work for you." Platitudes they don't mean, but which sound nice to the public.
The only reason the Republicans aren't a permanent 35% party in this country is because the public is naturally conservative and knows they can't trust the Democrats with more than tiny bits of power. They just fear us worse at the moment.
Bev, That only works when you can blame the teleprompter for failing... 26 times.
ReplyDeletetryanmax, If they had a platform, they could easily shift attention to that just by talking about that and telling the MSM, "Why don't we talk about the things I'm looking to achieve". But since they don't, they can't really do that.
ReplyDeletePatriot - re: Reagan's stance on abortion. Abortion was a non-topic in the late '70's. Just like same-sex marriage. The emerging AIDS crisis and "safe-sex" were all the rage back then. Reagan was branded by his detractors as a homophobe who wanted to see gays die from AIDS, but that was way off-base.
ReplyDeletePatriot, Money tends to come from cities, which are largely liberal, but the Republicans have in the past excelled at getting money from business people who like conservative economic ideas, but don't want any part of social conservative ideas. It seems that as the party drifts further to the fringes (economically and socially), those people are no longer offering money unless they like the candidate personally. And the activist base (e.g. Tea Party groups) are not taking up the slack.
ReplyDeletePatriot, I don't think we're a split nation at all. I think we are a nation that has turned off its electorate who would otherwise be handing victories to the Republicans. Said differently, we've lost the Reagan Democrats as have the Democrats. What's left are the hard-core voters on both sides, and as the politicians continue to pander to those people, they drive more and more people away.
ReplyDeleteOn Reagan, Reagan was opposed to abortion personally, but he almost never talked about it. As governor of California, he signed a bill allowing abortion. As President he initially said he supported a constitutional ban except for the life of the mother, but he never did anything about it. He never proposed other legislation. It was not a litmus test for his Supreme Court justices -- in fact, he was looking for people who would depoliticize the court, which means they would not overturn Roe. His abortion activities were limited to addressing the yearly pro-life rally each year by telephone so he couldn't be photographed at the event.
I know there's been an effort by the Religious Right to redefine him as leading with abortion to make themselves seem Reagan-like, but as someone who was there throughout the 1980s and who has gone back and looked into this claim, I can tell you that's simply not true. It wasn't an issue he pushed.
Bev, True. Abortion was not an issue the public at large cared about in the 1980s -- AIDS was THE social issue. And the Religious Right (which was then forming in Virginia actually - Jerry Falwell) were pushing prayer in school. But those were sideshows. 99% of Reagan's focus was on deregulation, rebuilding the military and facing down the Soviet Union.
ReplyDeleteAnd on abortion, it's important to realize that the pro-life movement was unembraceable at that point. They were busy picking clinics, assaulting women going into the clinics, and Operation Rescue was blowing up clinics. In effect, the public had a view of the pro-life movement then that is similar to how we see the Westborough Baptist Assholes today. Few politicians wanted any part of that at that point.
I have to say this.. a lot of Republicans/conservatives are predictably blaming Virginia on the Democrats smearing them.
ReplyDelete1. Do you think they don't do that in every race? How can you blame something that happens in every race?
2. If you can't win unless the other side only attacks you the way you want, then you need to leave politics... you are incompetent.
Also, those calling this a victory because it was close are delusional. It should not have been close. It should have been a blow out. This is a debacle and pretending it isn't is only drinking more KoolAid.
I don't remember much about the issues in the 80s (go figure) but I remember thinking even as a kid that the idea of Reagan as a fearful monster seemed whack-a-doo. Tells you how far both sides have come.
ReplyDeletetryanmax, It was whack-a-doo. Back then, the left was known as "the loony left." I'd say they're still just as crazy, but now they have competition from the right.
ReplyDeleteSo you are telling me Christie is a MINO "Moderate in name only".
ReplyDeleteGood one. And yeah, he's really nothing at all except a guy who wants to be in office.
ReplyDelete