So Let Me Get This Straight . . .
By Chris | Tuesday, July 29th, 2008 | Catch-AllDo Ken Cuccinelli’s supporters honestly think he can win with the same coalition of voters as Mark Early and Jerry Kilgore? I certainly don’t.
The simple fact is that if all of our Republican candidates in 2009 do not win the votes, and yes the financial support, of people in the Commonwealth who supported and voted for Warner and Kaine, we are going to lose again. I have no doubt that Bob McDonnell and Bill Bolling can accomplish this, as they have both won statewide office once before and seem positioned to broaden their voting coalitions next year.
The AG race is another story. Neither candidate has proven himself on the statewide level and both have work to do in making their case for electability. Unfortunately, Cuccinelli’s supporters seem all too eager to push people out of the Republican Party rather than welcoming them in. That is a recipe for failure.
I am certainly not suggesting that the candidates not be vetted completely. They should. However, it strikes me as bizarre that when a person who has held a position of trust for as long as Brownlee has and, by all accounts, has acquitted himself admirably therein, the first reaction by some Republicans is to immediately disbelieve everything he says based, not on a record that contradict those statements, but rather upon the absence of a public record.
I know some of you won’t believe me when I say this is not an attack on Ken. I am a big fan of Ken Cuccinelli and if he is our nominee, I will support him without any reservation. It simply baffles me to see the fervor with which his supporters seem to want to tear down John Brownlee. I guess that shouldn’t surprise me for as long as I’ve been in politics, but it still does.
I just hope we can move past the pettiness of personal attacks and talk about which candidate is best suited to continue the successful run of Republican Attorneys General in 2009. Both of these men deserve our full and fair consideration.
Tags:
Contribute for Conservatism!
Share this post
About the author
Chris Obenshain has been involved in Republican politics literally since the womb, when he attended Virginia's famous 1978 Convention in utero. 30 years later he still can't get politics out of his bloodstream. He currently works as a lawyer in southwest Virginia and serves as Chairman of the Roanoke Area Young Republicans chapter. As Old Zach, he helped found the blog Sic Semper Tyrannis in 2004 and has been blogging off and on ever since. He has also proudly served in the United States Army Reserve since 2002.
We're 75% there! Thank you to everyone who has so far contributed! Just $2000 to go!
Comments
17 Responses to "So Let Me Get This Straight . . ."
As long as Brownlee is a pawn in the hands of his consultants he shouldn’t be trusted.
I wish Cucchinelli would defend his Senate seat as vigorously as his supporters have gone after Brownlee…
Exactly what is to be gained by our statewide electeds if the General Assembly in in Democrat/ic hands?
Jay Zoeller could not have missed the point anymore if he tried. Keep up the good work Jay. You guys are doing a great job of driving us into permanent minority status.
Personal attacks? What personal attacks?
All we have done is note Brownlee’s errors in his own statements and point out a contributor with a RINO history. No one has raised a question about Brownlee’s character.
DJ, I just wish that one day those who love engaging in friendly fire would give the Democrats at least as much attention.
[...] is a blogger I enjoy and respect; he is also a friend. However, I have serious issue with his Bearing Drift post on the AG [...]
[...] about John Brownlee’s “absence of a public record” (as Chris Obenshain put it over at BD), I offer this from Brownlee’s Issues [...]
If I recall correctly, it was the Brownlee gang that started shooting down Cuccinelli on some obscure reference to some life insurance bill, and did it on Mason Conservative.
Now Brownlee himself seems to take issue with the fact that Cuccinelli has a better, longer, and more substantive pro-life record — and does this by point out a vote on the triggerman rule?
Clearly, someone hit a nerve.
Look — I am not a fan of the circular firing squad. Nor do I give short thrift to the Brownlee crowd for early, direct, and nasty attacks on Cuccinelli when there’s work to be done in 2008.
But facts are facts. If missteps now encourage a closer look to see if Brownlee is as conservative as Cuccinelli, folks are going to look. And when I see that Brownlee’s major donor is a huge Kaine supporter, a backer of the moderate Republicans in the Senate, and goes straight to work attacking Cuccinelli’s pro-life bona fides in one of the oddest gaffes I have read in recent memory… I have to pause.
Now if certain individuals want to hold Southwest Virginia’s votes hostage (which is what I’m reading in this post) in order to demand that Brownlee receive a “full and fair consideration”, so be it. That’s the regional hostage politics I’m more used to seeing from Northern Virginia politicians, who whine and complain when a NOVA moderate doesn’t get a statewide podium.
The bottom line is that Cuccinelli has a record, a long record, and it is consistent with every conservative principle we know works. Those are facts. They may bother Brownlee. They may even encourage Brownlee (and his supporters) to take cheap shots at a man they profess to admire.
But Cuccinelli’s record is proven. Brownlee has no record. That is a fact, and it is either recognized and lived with, or it is viciously attacked — and Brownlee chose the latter.
That’s unfortunate, IMO.
And apologies for the typos in advance…
[...] Chris Obenshain has a great post at Bearing Drift on the escalation of attacks on AG candidate John Brownlee by supporters Ken Cuccinelli. While Obenshain doesn’t state it, I believe that this is a great lesson in attempting to meld principle with electability. [...]
A COUPLE THINGS:
1.
“Do Ken Cuccinelli’s supporters honestly think he can win with the same coalition of voters as Mark Early and Jerry Kilgore? I certainly don’t.”
Really? We are going to start talking about Mark Earley and Jerry Kilgore as paths to victory? REALLY? It also helped that both Kilgore and Earley defeated very weak Democrat opponents. Sen. Cuccinelli has had the entire weight for the State Democrat Machine from Warnerkaine on down breathing down his neck since 2002 and he’s won every time.
2.
“I wish Cucchinelli would defend his Senate seat as vigorously as his supporters have gone after Brownlee…
Exactly what is to be gained by our statewide electeds if the General Assembly in in Democrat/ic hands?”
So anyone who is not in a safe senate district should be disqualified from running for statewide office? That will help . . . When will the state party understand that one of the major reasons we aren’t winning in Northern Virginia is that the GOP has a reputation of being all southern with no voice from the area in any real leadership position. They keep coming up here saying they support us, but we never really believe it because the state party has never shown the least bit of interest in treating Northern Virginia with anything but mild contempt.
Amen, Chris.
Well, some Brownlee supporters go around calling Cuccinelli a “puritain” and other names. Cuccinelli seems to prefer sticking to his issues and so do most of his supporters, Chris. I wouldn’t focus on the behavior of a few Cuccinelli supporters unless you want turnabout to be fair play. And that just tends to degenerate, so I might suggest it is better avoided.
Bottom line is that Cuccinelli has a strong conservative record where Brownlee doesn’t. That hardly means Brownlee is less conservative but it does mean that we don’t have reason to know that he is. Surely that is a reasonable observation.
D.J. McGuire said….”All we have done is note Brownlee’s errors in his own statements and point out a contributor with a RINO history.”
Yes….that’s a brilliant strategy…attack the fact that somebody can pull contributors from the other side. That’s the problem now. The contributors have all gone to the other side and we need to find ways to get them back into the GOP fold.
I would say that your approach just helps us move deeper into minority status.
“Do Ken Cuccinelli’s supporters honestly think he can win with the same coalition of voters as Mark Early and Jerry Kilgore? I certainly don’t.”
Same coalition of voters? I don’t think so. I voted for Gov. Allen, Gov. Gilmore, but wrote in names when Early and Kilgore ran for Governor. To confuse you more, I’d happily vote for Cuccinelli. I’ll leave it to the “experts” to spin why certain candidates didn’t get enough votes. So yes, I think he can win but, it won’t be the exact same supporters.
Gnarly,
Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but it’s been candidates who have appealed to RINOs during their campaigns (Earley 01, Kilgore 05, Allen 06, Howell et al 07) who lead us to crushing defeats. Principled limited-government campaigners, on the other hand, win here (Allen 93, Gilmore 97 and 99).
When we try to outbid the Democrats with the taxpayers’ money, we lose. How often does it have to happen before you notice the problem?
Britt, you made my point perfectly.
Leave your response