Republicans put Del. Dave Albo back into office, and now they’ve got to live with him.
President Bush’s sinking popularity helped seal Democrat Timothy M. Kaine’s victory in Virginia’s gubernatorial election Tuesday, politicians and pollsters said yesterday.
“We know that George Bush is just killing us,” said Delegate David B. Albo, a Republican who narrowly defeated his Democratic challenger in Fairfax County. “His popularity just brought the ticket down. There’s no other way to explain it.”
[…]
Scott Rasmussen, president of the New Jersey-based polling firm Rasmussen Reports, said the voters who made up their minds just before Election Day — about 12 percent of voters — favored Mr. Kaine by 15 percentage points.
That suggests some voters were turned off by a last-minute visit by Mr. Bush on Monday on Mr. Kilgore’s behalf. A Rasmussen survey of Virginia voters found that 51 percent approved of the president’s performance. Nationally, Mr. Bush has registered a 37 percent approval rating.
“It was not a good year to run as a Republican in Virginia,” said Mark Rozell, a public policy professor at George Mason University, adding that the Bush visit “probably backfired” and spurred Democrats to get out the vote.
If it were just Rasmussen and Rozell saying that the Bush visit was the last nail in the Kilgore campaign’s coffin, it would be easier to dismiss. But with ol’ Del. Albo backing them up, I do believe this is taking on an air of Truth.
Ah the spinning…
Hey, take it up with Del. Albo. Republican discipline seems to be lacking on this topic.
Kilgore’s campaign lost because it was steered by an incompetent stooge. At the end of the day, Kilgore failed to motivate his base, who abandoned him on Tuesday. Not being straightforward, like a George Allen or George W. Bush, depressed any enthusiasm that could have been gained from the base of the party. From his answer to Russert on abortion to his condemnation of Del. Marrs’ mailer, the Kilgore campaign pushed away the base, plain and simple.
Also, Kilgore campaign officials will always be well remembered as saying “these events are about JERRY and only about Jerry” a line that led many in the downticket races to flip the bird to folks like Hutcheson and Cantrell. Truly, vanity was our own worst enemy.
P.S. While it pains me to agree with Waldo on anything, Republican discipline truly was lacking in the Kilgore race.
I love it.
Republicans calling Scott Howell an “incompetent stooge”.
How sweet it is!
I agree with Walt. I disagree with Albo.
My first comment was just laughing at the different takes that Albo and I had on it.
Perhaps my thoughts didn’t come within the context of a Republican saying that it was Bush’s fault… It was more within the context of the left saying that it was Bush’s fault…
Most voters had no idea that Bush had showed up to stump for Kilgore when they went to the polls. It was a last-minute event late at night at an airport. I don’t believe for a second that Bush’s whistle stop had the slightest effect on this race. Kilgore himself was albatross enough.
Nor do I believe that Kilgore’s loss has really hurt Bush in any real way. What is there left for Bush to lose short of actually being removed from office? He’s unable to mobilize grassroots efforts in support of his policies. He can’t depend on being able to get nominations through the Senate. Bush can’t get any legislation of any kind moving through the House or Senate. He has no agenda. His approval rating is in the mid-30s. He has zero credibility internationally. He is unable to negotiate new international agreements or redirect foreign policy in any significant way. He can’t get sanctions against Iran or any other country. The UN hates him and his ambassador. He can’t get away with ordering any new military actions. What is left to take away? Air Force One privileges? Bush is down to the base model, rock-bottom list of executive powers. This is as powerless as a President can possible be. The only real step down from here is impeachment.
It’s kind of silly to point to any Republican defeat, failure, indictment or scandal and say that ‘this is dragging down the rest of the party.’ You’ve got a big circle of guys in the water with lead weights around their ankles who can’t swim and they’re not sure whether to grab onto each other for support or get away from each other lest the others drag them underwater. Who gives a shit what they do? They’re all drowning either way.
Does anyone else think that child molesters are flooding into Virginia after Albo’s win?
We had 5 apply for jobs in my office today alone…
Albo’s win is a big triumph for child molesters everywhere.
Former Delegate Golden: “Child molesters will have sex with anything”
Can anyone really look at Dave Albo with a straight face ever again? Without having a little bit of barf coming up their throat into their mouth?
Everyone look at the sbe.vipnet.org site and look at the magically changing numbers in the AG race, which seem to be updated every five minutes by the SBE. MCDONNELL’S LEAD WAS JUST CUT IN HALF! The reason?
Henrico County can’t count.
In the heavily black Fairfield precinct, they recorded 16 votes for Creigh instead of 610, so that was just a 594 vote swing. There’s still hope for Mr. Deeds, folks…
I disagree with Albo, and do not know why he believes that to be trues.
Kilgore ran a bad campaign, no Northern Virginia Republican was on the ticket, and we had our moderates primaried.
Albo told his friends that he would win by 20 points this year as recently as last week. Since he only won by 3 points, he needs an excuse. Naturally, instead of blaming his child molestation fetish, he blamed President Bush.
This is an interesting perspective on the article…
The befuddled Republicans, unused to getting their hands slapped, are still searching for the proper spin. Some national sycophants like Robert Novak claim that the election was decided by purely local issues, and that Kilgore was a “bad candidate.” Bad for following the vicious advice of Scott Howell, who was seconded to Kilgore by top Republican dogs BECAUSE he had such an outstnading record of winning (through dirty tricks)? Ha, ha, ha. What goes around comes around, and maybe those tactics met their first defeat in Virginia partly because Tim Kaine was had an integrity that Virginia voters recognized, and Howell misread “the Virginia Way.” On the other hand, why did the voters not see through McDonnell’s slash and burn? Maybe they needed a little help from the blogosphere here, too. The Repulicans will look for comfort where they can, and convince themselves the election loss had nothing to do with their own out-dated, half-baked, feudalistic philosophy, which the voters are in fact finally recognizing for what it is: pulling the wool over the sheep’s eyes the better to fleece him. Follow-up on your advantage, Democrats!
It was more within the context of the left saying that it was Bush’s fault…
Hmm, I don’t see much of “the left” saying it was Bush’s fault, just that it was partly Bush’s fault. I don’t think the Bush campaign appearance had much effect, but I know that the Bush scandals fired up the Democratic base, and pushed at least some Republicans to vote for Kaine, who they perceived as being Bush-like. (I know that because they told me when they came to the polls where I was working.)
Personally, I think Warner was a much bigger influence than Bush, but when a sitting president can’t do anything to counteract that and help a high-profile candidate, that says a lot about his influence.
Nah, Teddy. I actually agree with Novak for once. Kilgore was a terrible candidate, as we Democrats were saying all along. Why are we changing our tune now? This race was actually sort of a repeat of ’01. Republican candidate going hard negative and lying in the final days, Democrat responding vogorously while staying comparatively up-beat and positive. Then the Democrat wins with about 5 points, with a mixed bag down ticket and modest gains for the Democrats in the House. The ’01 race was in the midst of a political climate that generally favored Republicans and was pretty much scandal-free.
So you have almost the exact same results twice in a row despite reversed political climates nationally. This is about as clear cut a laboratory test as you can get in politics. The GOP lost this race for reasons having to do with Virginia and the relative merits of the Virginia GOP and Democratic parties. National politics ain’t in it.
ATA,
mostly agree with, but, heres the big but: I have a lot of Repubs in the fam, and they are just not in the mood, they don’t want to listen to the news, they dont want to talk politics (indictments , Miers, Katrinia, the war) . . . I would say that Bush and Washington are having a major affect in sapping the moral of their party. Remember just a couple of months ago they owned the world, now nothing seems to be going right.
Well, Dick Black blamed his loss on Hurricane Katrina and all the finger-pointing the slow response gave the White House. “I don’t see it as a local thing at all,” he said.
Is the guy like so totally in denial or what?