A. If you shill the party line and defend the Party even more automatically and shamelessly than its own elected officials and political operatives.
Virginia yesterday elected as its new Governor Democratic candidate Tim Kaine, even though Virginia is a solidly red state, and even though George Bush himself materialized in that state over the weekend to instruct the previously obedient GOP legions to go to the polls and vote for Republican Jerry Kilgore.
GOP operatives and politicians are admitting the obvious, because (even) they have to: this is a bad sign for Republicans and a by-product of Bush's staggering unpopularity:
''Republicans are not so angry at the president that they want to vote for the other guy. They just stayed home,'' said GOP consultant Rich Galen. Others noted that Bush battled conservative allies over Miers' failed Supreme Court nomination and has drawn criticism from within the GOP ranks for government spending.
''The one bright spot for my party,'' joked Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, ''is that the tab for the victory party at the Republican headquarters will be much smaller than if we had won.''
So there seems to be a consensus, even among the most faithful GOP followers, that last night was a bad night for Republicans and is, to one degree or another, reflective of its weakened national state, right?
Paul at Powerline is not buying it! He is here to tell us that the GOP losses last night are irrelevant – totally irrelevant – and do not in any way reflect poorly on Bush’s or the GOP’s overall health - not at all:
The Democrats will trumpet this win as evidence that they are on the comeback trail. They may very well be on that trail, but this race provides no good evidence of it. Kaine won because Democratic governor Mark Warner is extraordinarily popular (his approval rating is around 70 percent). There are no national implications here, unless the Dems are wise enough to run Warner for president in 2008, and they aren't.
See, this was all just about Mark Warner. It was just this weird little aberration in Virginia. There’s nothing to see here at all, just move along. Just because Bush personally went to that state and urged voters to turn out to vote for Kilgore -- and they just ignored him, or even did the opposite -- doesn’t say anything at all about Bush’s political standing. And so what if the GOP lost in Virginia, it’s not like Virginia is Texas or Alabama or anything.
And so it goes . . . at least they can ring a new slogan out of this:
"The Powerline Boys – spewing the Party line even more slavishly and mindlessly than the Party itself!"
I've heard other Repub. hacks spewing this same nonsense. If it werent so pathetic, it would be funny watching them deny their own drowning. OK, it's still fun, even given how pathetic it is.
ReplyDelete'previously obedient GOP legions'?
ReplyDeleteObedient?
Your scenario doesn't explain why the Republicans won the Lieutentant Governor race and probably the Attorney General race. Republicans came out to vote, just not for Jerry.
ReplyDeleteI live in Virginia and have had to put up with these two sorry campaigns. I voted for Kilgore, but held my nose while doing it. All Kilgore did was run a bunch of attack ads. Absolutely nothing else. He didn't tout one single policy change. Kaine almost did nothing but run attack ads also, but at least he had some proposals for road construction (though not necessarily good ones). But Jerry's ads were the more vicious. He even invoking Godwin's Law by saying "Kaine's so anti-death penalty, he'd pardon Adolf Hitler".
The worst was the Live-TV debate they had. Both candidates basically spoke to the audience like we were a bunch of babies, repeating the same slogans said by the disembodied voices on their stupid commercials. Larry Sabato, a very good UVA professor and political pundit tried to squeeze some policy stance from the both of them, and all they did was revert to their talking points.
It breaks my heart that a Commonwealth full of such sophisticated people had to choose between these two dumbasses. This election really showed the worst aspects of American politics: watching two grown men perform a minstrel show in order to psychologically validate themselves by winning a popularity contest; The more important socio-political issues involved be damned.
And I suppose those 69% of voters in St. Paul who threw out an incumbent Democratic mayor who supported Bush -- the first loss by an incumbent mayor in St. Paul in over 30 years -- don't count for anything, either.
ReplyDeleteFrederick