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

[Zundfolge]

The problem in VA is that the Libertarian Party candidate was NOT a libertarian ... he was a leftist (for the Love of Rand he wanted to force Virginians to install GPS trackers in their cars so they could be taxed by the mile) and Libertarians in VA did the very thing they chastise Republicans for doing; blindly voting the party.

The reasons McAuliffe won is because of a combination of Democrat dirty tricks (including, but not limited to running and backing a faux Libertarian to split the right of center vote), Establishment GOP trying to purge the Tea Party from its ranks and Republican/Conservative/Gun Owner apathy ... turnout was a record low.


As for Chris Christie ... he's a Democrat that keeps winning in a solidly Democrat state. Period. He just wears the (R) to fool people in the middle. If the GOP picks him as their candidate the GOP will die (hopefully it will be a repeat of the death of the Whigs and birth of the GOP back in the 1800s happening almost simultaneously ... if we end up with a weak GOP and strong 3rd party than the entire country will go the way of VA and we're fucked)

[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.

[lowbeyond]

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.

yeppers

[avandelay]

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.

Agreed. I'm not so sure that Ken C would have won even if Sarvis had been outed earlier in the cycle, but it does create angst when the Libertarian candidate is that far from Libertarian ideals and still manages to get 6% of the vote. For all I know he was pulling votes from McCaulliffe(sp?) because of the very stance for more gov't. As for Ken not getting the big R support from the party headquarters, it seems it is time to starve the beast and donate directly to our candidates instead of expecting the RNC to do it.

[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.

[Aloha_Shooter]

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.

That's just plain ignorant. The Libertarian candidate wasn't even in the running, his running put the Democrat in the office just like Perot put Clinton in office and kept him in office (and I like Perot).

Republicans don't need to become Libertarians, strict Constitutionalists need to take over the Republican party and challenge the Establishment types. Rand Paul wouldn't even be in office if he followed your game plan.

So what if a Dem gets in? Jane Norton wouldn't have been the 60th vote enabling Obama to push Obamacare past a GOP filibuster. Dan Maes wouldn't have signed the gun control legislation this year. As bad as George Bush was about spending and Medicare Part D, he wouldn't have misused the IRS the way Obama has. Get a clue from the fact that Dems are not only happy about getting a plurality by having Libertarians split the non-Democratic vote with Republicans, they actually give massive amounts of money to Libertarian candidates to do this.

[centrarchidae]

In Colorado we rejected a nearly $1B schools tax backed by unions...

You left out the best part: By a 2-1 margin when I went to bed (may have narrowed overnight), despite being outspent something like 200-1, and even after the legislature crammed fraud-friendly voter-registration laws through in the last session.

I'm not losing sleep over VA. Not only did the Democrats fund McAulliffe better than the Republicans supported Cooch, but the Dems also funded Sarvis (Do Libertarians not vet their candidates? I mean, carbon taxes and per-mile taxes, really?) better than the Republicans supported Cooch, and all that for about a two-point margin of defeat. Same clusterf*** we had here in 2010, almost. (And the RNC can and should all go suck-start Glocks and drink whatever they find in the garage for both of those, but that's a rant for another day.)

I don't think CO is going to stay blue for long. Not if we stay angry about the last year.

[generalmeow]

The Libertarian candidate wasn't even in the running.

...because the libertarian candidate didn't have the republican votes. And the republican wasn't in the running without the libertarian votes. Same difference. The Republicans are the ones who are wrong, because they're voting for lies and broken promises.

[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%.

[Justin]

I think a lot of the blame rests with Cucinelli himself. He ran as a staunch social conservative in a part of the country where that sort of rhetoric is going to cost you votes.


Furthermore, he didn't distance himself from supporting the government shutdown. Regardless of whether you think the shutdown was a good or bad idea, it doesn't take a genius to realize that a large percentage of voters in Virginia are federal employees and contractors that were negatively impacted by the shutdown, and supporting it didn't win him any friends among that sector.


Point fingers at the libertarian all you want, it doesn't change the fact that Cucinelli was a tactically poor choice of candidate for Virginia.