So the tea party is wounded and Chris Christie is the face of (R)

[merl]

As per the news this morning, the loss in VA means the tea party/R hard liners are hurt and the solid win in NJ means Mr Christie is the front runner for 2016.

Thoughts, opinions? I know he is no fan of gun rights be neither was Mr Romney. Anyone else get the feeling that we'd get thrown under the bus in an instant?

[cstone]

A liberal Republican won re-election in a liberal Democrat state. Christie becomes the GOP front runner for 2016. Too early for me to care about that race.

The sub-state of Northern Virginia proves once again how very different it is from the rest of the Commonwealth by electing a Washington insider who outspent his opponent 2 to 1. IMO, Kuccinelli lost the race based on the turn out of women who voted against his stand on abortion. I personally agree with Kuccinelli on the issue, but take the issue of abortion out of that race and he would be the governor elect this morning.

If the bus is being driven by the establishment media, I expect to remain under it. I mostly ignore the establishment media.

[Aloha_Shooter]

Cucinelli lost because McAuliffe learned to lie from the best (the Clintons) and he was hugely outspent. If anything, tea party principles were born out -- no Libertarian candidate and Cucinelli would have won an election he was supposed to lose by double digits.

[Circuits]

no Libertarian candidate and Cucinelli would have won an election he was supposed to lose by double digits.

Dem machine funded the libertarian candidate quite a bit, too - to successfully split the non-dem vote.

[generalmeow]

Dem machine funded the libertarian candidate quite a bit, too - to successfully split the non-dem vote.

I see a lot of Republicans pissed at Libertarians on other website comment sections, because the Republicans and Libertarians combined for 53% of the votes. The Republicans think those are all their votes. But I think those are all Libertarian votes. The Republicans cost the Libertarian the election.

If the Republicans don't want Libertarians stealing their votes, they need to become Libertarians. As a Libertarian, why would I ever vote for a Republican? They don't represent anything I want. If a Democrat gets elected, so what? It's just going to piss people off more which will in turn help them see things the Libertarian way. The more Democrats win, the more Libertarian conservatives will become. That's a good thing.

[sniper7]

I see a lot of Republicans pissed at Libertarians on other website comment sections, because the Republicans and Libertarians combined for 53% of the votes. The Republicans think those are all their votes. But I think those are all Libertarian votes. The Republicans cost the Libertarian the election.

If the Republicans don't want Libertarians stealing their votes, they need to become Libertarians. As a Libertarian, why would I ever vote for a Republican? They don't represent anything I want. If a Democrat gets elected, so what? It's just going to piss people off more which will in turn help them see things the Libertarian way. The more Democrats win, the more Libertarian conservatives will become. That's a good thing.

Sounds like a wet dream to me.

[avandelay]

I see a lot of Republicans pissed at Libertarians on other website comment sections, because the Republicans and Libertarians combined for 53% of the votes. The Republicans think those are all their votes. But I think those are all Libertarian votes. The Republicans cost the Libertarian the election.

If the Republicans don't want Libertarians stealing their votes, they need to become Libertarians. As a Libertarian, why would I ever vote for a Republican? They don't represent anything I want. If a Democrat gets elected, so what? It's just going to piss people off more which will in turn help them see things the Libertarian way. The more Democrats win, the more Libertarian conservatives will become. That's a good thing.

The issue in VA is that there are good indications that Sarvis (the L candidate) was a shill candidate. He got a lot of campaign funding that can be tracked back to a Dem money bundler and his stance was, in many cases, for more government instead of less. Had the VA Libertarians actually looked at where the candidate stood instead of just looking at his party affiliation then he should have received far fewer votes that, in theory, would have gone to Ken C.

[muddywings]

The issue in VA is that there are good indications that Sarvis (the L candidate) was a shill candidate. He got a lot of campaign funding that can be tracked back to a Dem money bundler and his stance was, in many cases, for more government instead of less. Had the VA Libertarians actually looked at where the candidate stood instead of just looking at his party affiliation then he should have received far fewer votes that, in theory, would have gone to Ken C.

this plus the republican establishment failed to financially back Ken C. and support his candidacy. Basically it sounds like the RINO establishment didn't like a tea party guy raining on their parade so they rather have uber liberal D run the state then an R that in many ways looked more like a libertarian on many issues except certain social issues.
Sarvis was a libertarian in name only.

edit: Zundfolge beat me to it.

[def90]

The issue in VA is that there are good indications that Sarvis (the L candidate) was a shill candidate. He got a lot of campaign funding that can be tracked back to a Dem money bundler and his stance was, in many cases, for more government instead of less. Had the VA Libertarians actually looked at where the candidate stood instead of just looking at his party affiliation then he should have received far fewer votes that, in theory, would have gone to Ken C.

Even so how can anyone assume that those people that voted Libertarian would have voted Republican? they could just as easily voted Dem, for all you know the Libertarian candidate could have taken more votes from the Dem than the Rep. There is a poll out there somewhere that asked people that voted 3rd party if there were only 2 choices how would you have voted and the results came back split about the same as the regular election results so the 3rd party voters take votes from both the left and right. Not sure why everyone always assumes that they steal only from the right. I'm sure every time a Rep wins some Dem is sitting at home bitching how the 3rd party guy stole votes from his side of the vote.

http://reason.com/blog/2013/11/06/re...your-candidate

Here's an article that speaks of an exit poll of people that voted Sarvis.. If they had not voted Sarvis they would have voted McAuliffe at a 2 to 1 margin so Cucinelli still would have lost.

http://reason.com/blog/2013/11/06/do...cuccinelli-los

But to blame a major-party loss on third-party candidates is fundamentally mistaken. First off, it ignores data that the Libertarian pulled more votes from the Democratic candidate than he did from the Republican one—an exit poll of Sarvis voters showed that they would have voted for McAuliffe by a two-to-one margin over Cucinelli. Second, and far more important, it presumes that all potential votes somehow really “belong” to either Democrats or Republicans. That’s simply wrong and it does a real disservice to American politics.

Also in this race, Dem turnout was up 4% while Rep voter turnout was down 5%.

[ChunkyMonkey]

I see a lot of Republicans pissed at Libertarians on other website comment sections, because the Republicans and Libertarians combined for 53% of the votes. The Republicans think those are all their votes. But I think those are all Libertarian votes. The Republicans cost the Libertarian the election.

If the Republicans don't want Libertarians stealing their votes, they need to become Libertarians. As a Libertarian, why would I ever vote for a Republican? They don't represent anything I want. If a Democrat gets elected, so what? It's just going to piss people off more which will in turn help them see things the Libertarian way. The more Democrats win, the more Libertarian conservatives will become. That's a good thing.

Low information voters do exist in all parties. In this case the libertards' candidate is as libertarian as Christie is a conservative.

I dont think the libertarians siphon any votes from the conservative -- not enough to eek out a win anyway. Most libertards I know will not vote for 'the lesser of 2 evils.' Meanwhile the socialists, communists, tree huggers, and so on will vote dems no matter what their dimwit says.