There’s blood in the water, and the sharks are circling.
Family Policy Network president Joe Glover tears up Jerry Kilgore in a new column, having concluded that Kilgore lost because he just wasn’t far enough to the right. Glover argues that Kilgore wasn’t sufficiently anti-gay, anti-tax, anti-birth-control, or anti-abortion to win.
Though I’m not dismissing it entirely, this logic reminds me of that of many Democrats after the presidential election a year ago. Then — and now — it was argued that Democrats should run candidates farther to the left, deriding Sen. John Kerry as “Republican Lite.”
The election of Democrat Tim Kaine, on the heels of 2001’s election of Democratic Governor Mark Warner, makes clear that one successful path is to run centrist Democrats promoting bread-and-butter issues. Candidates who aren’t anti-everything, as Glover would have it, but pro-many things.
I disagree with Republicans who believe that Kilgore lost because he wasn’t conservative enough. I think that the single biggest problem that Kilgore had was that he tried to play the role of a tough guy — attacking Kaine, talking up the death penalty, acting like the governor is the state’s top cop — when his entire personality and demeanor is entirely the opposite. A soft-spoken, reserved guy like Kilgore can’t be taken seriously when promising to execute anybody with a speeding ticket. It just seemed creepy.
We’ll all talk about the whys of the outcome of this election for a long time go come. I’ll probably change my mind about it a few times. But Republicans who think that they need to move more to the right are delusional. If they want to run a fascist, hey, be my guest. We’ll just keep on running centrist Democrats and, slowly but surely, we’ll move the state more to the left.
Kilgore’s problems was that he was a homosexual, i mean comeon lets call a spade a spade.
great, keep it up, move more to the right…now that VA has “seen the light” in regards to what good common sense moderate leadership can do (e.g. Mark Warner) we ain’t never going back…and yes there is something very, strange about kilgore’s obessions with homoxexulatity and his accent….
I would agree that Kilgore could have used one solid anti-abortion policy item in his arsenal. The evangelicals had no reason to turn out for him. This could have gotten him a few more points.
If I were Kilgore’s campaign manager, I would have come up with some new scheme to block late-term abortions and responded to critisicm of the legal impracticality (what with Roe vs. Wade) with the answer that Bush’s new SCOTUS picks will allow it. That statement alone would buy you huge media coverage and get Dobson hustling his mailing lists for you. They’re just dyin’ for a test case. Late term abortions are great for the GOP because even liberals are really against them so you don’t lose much of the center even when you come up with a proposal against them.
This is actually the reason why they made sure to put a ‘poison pill’ about not doing it to save the life of the mother when they had that federal bill a few years ago. They knew that the court would overturn the law that way – which is crucial, because they need to be able to keep running against late term abortions in order to keep a choke-hold on that voting bloc.
Mr. Jaquith,
I agree that Kilgore’s loss wasn’t attributable to conservatives. Conservatives did turn out, and I don’t believe they didn’t vote for Kilgore. I don’t agree that Kilgore’s loss was attributable to a juxtaposition of his accent and mannerisms with his stand on capital punishment. That’s far too narrow. There were a lot of things that contributed to his loss. And while you don’t point to that juxtaposition as the only reason, I think calling it the “single biggest” reason is a bit arbitrary.
I would like to believe that Kilgore lost because he was too far to the right. To be sure he had a whole host of other problems, but for me that was the biggest negative. Republicans who think they need to move more to the right are the problem with the Republican party.
Both Kaine and Kilgore had an identical weakness — Kilgore’s was just worse.
Kaine’s problem was that he struck many as not having the strength of his convictions. That was what his position on abortion and the death penalty boiled down to — who he is was not connected to the positions that he took. He appeared, to some, a man playing a role; to strong critics, he was seen as a liar.
Likewise with Kilgore. His position on the death penalty was “I’ll kill the bastards myself.” But no man wearing a pumpkin-orange blouse can say that in a manner that’s particularly convincing. He, too, seemed a man playing a role, pretending to be a tough guy. He seemed like he couldn’t possibly have the strength of his convictions. I imagine he’d vomit if he actually witnessed an execution, and I think he’s a better man for it.
The problem wasn’t that Kilgore is a bit of a fop. The problem was that his personality is at utter odds with the role he played as a candidate, a role that he was forced into because of his service background (public safety, AG).
I get the sense that Kilgore, when he’s not play-fighting, is probably a pretty swell guy. Only now, two days after the election, can I envision him having dropped what I assume to have been an act. And, frankly, I suspect he might be a pretty great guy without the schtick.
I’ll argue that the reason Kilgore lost was that his campaign lacked substance. The campaign was characterized by the weak juxtaposition of his patented “All Negative, All the Time ™” campaign, vs. Tim Kaine’s reasoned and believeable “I’ll continue to get things done for Virginia.” message.
I think that Kilgore’s cowardice on the abortion issue gave his base one less reason to turn out, but this election really finally hinged on gettin’ stuff done, rather than rilin’ people up.
Kilgore lost the independent vote in a big way. I think that he came to the AG’s Office as a
right-leaning moderate, but was convinced by the right-wing fanatics that he had to be more
conservative, which is not his nature. I don’t think that he is necessarily a strong anti-gay,
anti-abortion guy (especially if you believe the rumors, which I do not). I think those
contradictions made him a weaker candidate. He never felt comfortable speaking
outside of a script because he wasn’t speaking from the heart. He spoke the
words of a “true believer” conservative. Mere words didn’t inspire the “true believers”
but lost moderates.
Kilgore didn’t loose because he was too conservative. That is just a silly argument. Kaine had a number of things going for him: 1)Mark Warner’s coatails and Wilder’s endorsement 2)Bad Republican press everywhere, especially in Washington 3)The death penalty ads, while true they were over the top and provided Kaine the opportunity to play the victim. It’s not unusual for Virginia to have a Democratic govenor during a Republican presidency. But saying that this state is turning blue is just disengenuous.
But saying that this state is turning blue is just disengenuous.
It’s hard to look at Democrats ever-increasing advantage over Republicans and conclude anything different. Democrats have gained seats in the GA for the past three elections.
Waldo- you have ignored the fact that Warner had the biggest negative coattails in GA history when the GOP picked up so many seats-the most in history-four years ago. There was bound to be a bounce back after twenty some years of steady GOP gains. Even after the 1991 Democrat controlled redistricting that was the biggest fiasco in the history of redistricting, the GOP held its own in the house and gained mightily in the Senate.
Kaine won not because of his liberalism but in spite of it-his strategy was to hide it- and to make himself as the logical follower to Mark and he was successful at both. You call it not having strength of his convictions- I call it hiding them and fooling the people. If he truly has the beliefs he has so long held strongly- especially that of opposition to the death penalty- we will see him pull a similar bait and switch that Warner did on taxes and reevaluate his postion once he is inaugurated and invoke a moratoriam- since he so finely parsed his words in the campaign by saying he would follow the law of the Commonweath- which of course allows him to do exactly that.
We will see which is more hypocritical- to not follow his beliefs or to have mislead the people of Virginia to win an election.
I believe you’re mistaken about Republicans picking up the most seats in history four years ago. I think that would have been right after the ’91 redistricting, when Democrats’ redistricting pitted so many Republican incumbents against Democratic incumbents, poorly.
Waldo,
I like you but you need to check your facts. The GOP pickup in the house in 2001 was about 13 seats with 19 new Delegates. The pickup in 1991 was in the Senate when your party leader Cranwell put so many good delegates together in Senate Districts where you had weak Senators and we had a net gain of 8 I think. That was also the year you guys supposedly did away with George Allen also.
I’d love to check my facts on this, but I don’t know what resource to use to do so. :)
Assuming that’s so, then I draw two conclusions. The first is that Gov. Warner must be truly remarkable for having won in a year when Republicans otherwise did very well. The second is that Gov. Warner must clearly have developed some serious coattails given that Democrats have enjoyed victory after victory in the House of Delegates since his election.
Here is a source for you. You can try to spin it any way you want but Warner had very negative coattails in 1991. If you read what some like the Ferguson campaign say about his and the Democrat Party support this year, he really has not done much to advance the numbers for your party in the legislature.
Here are the numbers
http://www.vafree.com/GAprofil.htm
This chart is mosly correct except that the 2003 year in the House of Delegates should be 2001.
This shows that even when the Democrats controlled the redistricting -1991- they lost seats in the house and a big big loss in the Senate. So when you tell someone all the gains in the House came because of redistricting in 2001, it just is not true. The GOP did a much better job of candidate recruitment in that year and for over twenty-five years.
Warner had very negative coattails in 1991.
And again I say this is evidence that Warner can get elected in strongly Republican environments. The reversal in fortunes for Democrats — gaining seats in the last three elections — since Warner’s election makes obvious that he’s a man who can bring about improvement.
This shows that even when the Democrats controlled the redistricting -1991- they lost seats in the house and a big big loss in the Senate. So when you tell someone all the gains in the House came because of redistricting in 2001, it just is not true.
There’s no reason to believe that one follows the other. Seems to me that Republicans learned the lessons of 1991 redistricting, discovering how not to do it. In ’91, Democrats vastly overestimated their own power, assuming that anytime that an incumbent Democrat was pitted against an incumbent Republican, the Dem would win. Huge mistake. The Republicans did not make that same mistake in 2001.