By now everyone knows that Terry McAuliffe has won the race for governor in Virginia. If you cared about such things anyway. There are going to be a lot of people analyzing the result and I’m just going to be a drop in the bucket, but here goes.
For one thing, Republicans are very bad at handling the abortion debate. Often times, the Democrats make good on this by painting the Republicans as anti-women because of their pro-life stance. McAuliffe played the abortion card early on and it got him ahead. All Cuccinelli had to do was counter by stating that he believes abortion is murder and as such he cannot in good conscience support murder. But Republicans lack the balls to do this.
Another thing this election shows is that liberty-minded voters are sick and tired of being taken for granted by the Republicans. The 7% of those who voted for the Libertarian Robert Sarvis demonstrate this. Many liberty-minded voters are still sore over all the injustices they suffered during last year’s primary season at the hands of the Republican party bosses.
This is the key reason why Cuccinelli lost. He himself had a pretty good platform and indeed a good track record of liberty, seeing that VA was the first state to nullify Obamacare with his backing as Attorney General. But because of the behavior of the Republicans with regards to Ron Paul, the Republicans suffered a loss of support from among a large group of voter who have clearly tipped the scales.
Single women, blacks, and Hispanics will always vote for Democrats. There is no point in trying to win them over without diluting your political message to the point where you are indistinguishable from your Democratic opponent. Essentially, you’d have to make concessions which Democrats generally do in order to win favor with those groups.
But it is not hard to make concessions with libertarians. They are for smaller government, so any conservative Republican can easily appeal to them. All it takes is a little more leaning to the right and you might capture a large voting base. For one thing, you are going to have to abandon many social issues that win over the mainstream conservative, but since most Republicans don’t care about such issues anyway, it isn’t difficult.
Thirdly, the only surprise in the results was how close it was between McAuliffe and Cuccinelli. Earlier polls had Terry Mac winning by a wide range, mostly because of Sarvis being included in those polls. But somehow, Cuccinelli managed to close in that gap fairly well in spite of losing a huge voter base.
And lastly, don’t fret over the Democrats winning. They have essentially won control of the growing police state, the impending economic collapse, and the beginning of the end of the American Empire. Any leader worth his salt would not want to be the one who oversees the coming mess. This is largely why I laugh at Obama’s own machinations, as I know they will all be a chasing after the wind in a few short years.