Politics Bad signs for the Republican Party

This flies in the face of the fact that Gillespie ran on Trumpism. That's why he lost.

 

No... He actually ran with the backing of #43 G.W. Bush.

 

I hope you are right, but it’s just a blip in one region. It very well could be a glimpse of what’s to come or it could be a localized result. The difference between today and the ‘18 or especially the ‘20 elections are enormous. I just wouldn’t get too cocky.

 

He wouldn't so much as mention Trump's name during his campaign. He completely disassociated himself with Trump and tried to play to both sides. That's why he lost. Can't have both. Not right now anyway.

 

Trumpism without Trump doens't work. He pandered to the racists and lost.

Trumpism Without Trump: A Losing Formula in Swing-State Virginia

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — For Ed Gillespie, Trumpism was an ill-fitting suit.

His résumé was pure establishment — national Republican Party chairman, counselor to President George W. Bush, well-connected K Street lobbyist. But the messaging of his campaign for governor of Virginia was that of a cultural flamethrower, emphasizing crimes by undocumented immigrantsas well as monuments to Confederate heroes — and even suggesting that his opponent, a pediatric neurologist, supported child pornographers.

As the Republican candidate, Mr. Gillespie tried to run in a very narrow lane by embracing some of the most divisive elements of President Trump’s agenda while treating him like Voldemort and mostly refusing to utter his name. It was enough to motivate Mr. Trump’s supporters in rural parts of the state, but fell far short in Northern Virginia, where the wealthy and well-educated voters who were once reliably Republican continued their march toward becoming solidly Democratic.

Lessons from off-year elections can be overdrawn, but the Virginia race strongly suggests that Republicans running in swing states will have to choose a side rather than try to straddle an uncomfortable line. Mr. Trump’s blunt force, all-or-nothing approach has worked in deeply conservative areas, but Republicans will have trouble replicating that in certain states in the midterms next year when faced with a diverse, highly educated electorate like the one in Virginia.

“We now know what a lot of us in the party already knew: The Trump message is a big loser in swing states and he hurts the G.O.P. far more than helps in those states,” Mike Murphy, a Republican strategist and critic of the president, said in an email. “Suburban voters don’t like Trump and his antics energize Democrats. The myth of Trump electoral power will now start to melt. A wildly unpopular president is a big political problem for the G.O.P. in swing states.”

Another prominent Republican aligned with conservatives called the results, including a number of legislative races, a “clear repudiation” of the party.

The outcome also showed that women were highly motivated to vote for the Democratic nominee, Lt. Gov. Ralph S. Northam, and other Democrats, including several female candidates running in Northern Virginia who defeated incumbent Republicans in state General Assembly races. The prominence of female candidates and the energy behind them here is something that the party will try to repeat in other states.

“I usually resist the temptation to nationalize these races in Virginia, but Trump has been an overbearing presence in this election, and Ed Gillespie chose to run a campaign modeled after the kind of campaign Trump ran last year,” said Mark J. Rozell, dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. “This was the first big test in the Trump era of the appeal of Trump-style politics at the state level. The president injected himself in this campaign, so he owns some of it.”

Indeed, the president suggested that Mr. Gillespie’s biggest problem was not embracing him enough. “Ed Gillespie worked hard but did not embrace me or what I stand for,” Mr. Trump said on Twitter Tuesday night.

Democrats who were worried about low turnout and a lack of energy can breathe easier. The profile of the electorate in Virginia, where Democrats have started to dominate the counties across the Potomac from Washington, was heavily in their favor, and that advantage has been steadily growing with an influx of immigrants who were repelled by Mr. Gillespie’s message, and by a durable foundation of black voters.

In that sense, the pressure for Mr. Northam and the Democrats to win masked the frictions in the party between his more centrist posture and some liberals who criticized his campaign and refused to endorse him.

Democrats showed that they could generate energy, even for a low-key candidate like Mr. Northam, but they can draw little from his campaign in terms of a message other than opposing the harshest edges of Trumpism.

The president’s approval rating in Virginia was 38 percent in a recent poll, and Mr. Gillespie was grudgingly yoked to him. Mr. Trump posted Twitter messages promoting Mr. Gillespie, including on Election Day, but did not campaign with the candidate, an explicit, extraordinary recognition from Mr. Gillespie that appearing with the president of his own party would hurt more than help, something that has rarely happened since Richard Nixon was engulfed by Watergate.

Mr. Gillespie tried at times to focus on the economy by talking down the state’s prospects under Democrats, but that message did not break through. The state’s unemployment rate is 3.7 percent, and the Northern Virginia region that helped propel Mr. Northam includes some of the wealthiest counties in the country. It did work in rural areas where voters, many without a four-year degree, who once worked in coal mines or in the tobacco industry have not shared in the state’s prosperity.

Though each candidate emphasized issues that played to their base supporters, Mr. Gillespie won the Republican nomination by defeating a far more pure Trumpian candidate, Corey Stewart, and Mr. Northam prevailed over the favorite of progressives, former Representative Tom Perriello. So neither party’s voters were inclined toward the candidate who drew the brightest line distinctions.

But during the campaign, Mr. Gillespie draped himself in Mr. Trump’s clothes, particularly his tough talk on cracking down on illegal immigration. As a national party leader, Mr. Gillespie had been known for his efforts to expand the Republican tent and find a way to connect with immigrant voters, particularly Hispanics.

“I think Ed Gillespie did everything he thought he needed to do to fire up the Trump base, and if the Democrats are fired up and feel united around a cause — whether a good policy or the politics of Donald Trump and others as too anti-women — the Trump coalition is not big enough,” said Steve Jarding, a lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and a Democratic campaign consultant.

Democrats needed a victory in Virginia more than Republicans did. Mr. Northam pointed to at least one way. His election showed the limits of Trumpism, and now Republicans will have a choice about how clearly to embrace it.

 

Ed Gillespie forgot there is more to Trump than racism

After Republican Ed Gillespie lost the race for Virginia governor on Tuesday, the president tweeted: "Ed Gillespie worked hard but did not embrace me or what I stand for. Don't forget, Republicans won 4 out of 4 House seats, and with the economy doing record numbers, we will continue to win, even bigger than before!"

That was the problem: Ed Gillespie did not embrace Trump or what he stood for enough.

He forgot that there is more to Trump than just racism: There is also corruption and incompetence.

He did the first part just fine. His MS-13 commercials were exactly the sort of nightmarish dog-horn that is Trump's specialty. But he forgot: that is not all that "Trumpism" is. Otherwise we would not need a special new -ism for it and could just say "racism."

No, Gillespie barely even tried. Where was the paranoia? Where were the unhinged rants about wire-tapping? Where were the attacks on the legitimacy of the free press? There was, naturally, some gleeful disregard for fact, and those lines about sanctuary cities were Trump-ish, but there could have been much more. Just to show he was trying. Where were the conspiracy theories? Where was Alex Jones?

At no point in the campaign did Gillespie invite any interference from Russia! And he calls this embracing Trump? Where was the nepotism? Where was the dubiously ethical self-promotion? Where was the total apathy towards governing? Where were the unexpected fits of temper that required constant management? I didn't see Ed Gillespie out on the road emitting a continuous stream of personal insults that, although spoken aloud, sounded somehow misspelled, but I did miss the debate, so it is possible that it happened. He had a whole campaign to do it, and did he insult a single gold-star widow, or even hint at mocking a disabled reporter? What kind of Trumpism is this, really?

Nothing about Ed Gillespie implied that he had embraced the basic Trumpist tenant of having no idea what the job he was applying for even involved. He had some bad ideas — a hallmark of Trumpism — but then again, he had too many, and they all included specifics. Anyone could tell you that a true Trump plan would never have specifics.

Where was the self-promotion? Where were the hats? Where was the well-heeled family with problematic, undisclosed business ties? Where were the advisors of dubious provenance, some with mustaches and some without? I mean, did Gillespie even golf this election season?

Trumpism is a many-pronged pitchfork.

With no evidence that Gillespie was planning to give major responsibilities to a son-in-law incapable of filling out a simple disclosure form, how could the voters of Virginia believe that he was truly embracing Trump and what he stands for? Was Gillespie motivated by a deep desire to help increase the fortune and prominence of Donald Trump, first and foremost, and anything else afterward? No. He also wanted Ed Gillespie to be elected governor.

This is not Trumpism.

Tuesday night brought more than just Ralph Northam's election as governor, or Justin Fairfax as the state's second black Lieutenant Governor, or that a tidal wave of down-ticket races also went vigorously blue. It was not because maybe, just maybe, the state was able to rise out of Trumpist politics based on fear and choose one based on hope, where, in the words of newly elected transgender Virginia state legislator Danica Roem, "we celebrate you because of who you are, not despite it." (Poetically enough, she will unseat the legislator who called himself Virginia's "chief homophobe.") It was not because people might want to be better than Trump, both the -ism and the man. It was not that, of course. No one is better than Trump. It must have been Russian interference, or something.

 

I think the Charlottesville tragedy played a gigantic role. But will that play a role nationally?

 

Providing a cut and paste article from The New York Times by Michael Tackett, who is a proud leftist, flies in the face of nothing at all. Ed Gillespie is a died (pun intended) in the wool RINO cultivated by the GOP establishment. That being said, he actually did much better than anyone who followed that race believed he could. Virginia has been a blue state (well within the DC Beltway) for almost the last decade and is getting bluer as time goes on. Hildabeast won Virgina by about 5 points.

 

Was not referring to any polls as we know how accurate they have been lately. Most talking heads on the news intimated Gillespie would be lucky to beat the spread even with last minute help from Trump.