Virginia's capitol building courtesy panoramio.com

After receiving millions of dollars in support from gun control groups, Terry McAuliffe has officially been elected to the governor’s chair in the state of Virginia. Despite his opponent Ken Cuccinelli leading in the early results tonight, the heavily Democratic counties in Fairfax and Alexandria have tipped the scales enough in his favor to win. The race tonight was extremely close, and there’s little doubt that recent events nearly put Cuccinelli over the top, but rest assured that the gun control advocates who invested in McAuliffe will parade their victory as if it were a unanimous vote.

The whole point for Bloomberg and Watts was to use the “sure thing” of McAuliffe’s election to boost their own profile. They had been stumbling in recent months, unable to have any impact whatsoever in national or state politics to further their civilian disarmament agenda, and they were in serious trouble of becoming irrelevant. They needed a victory — ANY victory —  to keep the donations coming and keep their names in the headlines. And when they saw that Democratic candidate McAuliffe was in the lead by 15 points, they immediately jumped on board his campaign.

In the days after the gun control advocacy groups started campaigning for McAuliffe, his numbers plummeted. From a high of a 15 point lead, he dropped back to the point where the race was within the margin of error. But on polling day, he was able to barely pull it out and win. Barely.

According to CNN, the results are within 2% between the candidates.

Despite how close this race actually was, there’s no doubt that the Moms Demand Action propaganda machine will be in high gear spinning this as a resounding success and a clear message from Virginia residents that they want — nay, demand — more gun control. Nevermind the fact that less than half of the people casting ballots voted for McAuliffe, in the mind of Watts and Bloomberg it will be a glorious victory that they can use to point to and say “see? We can bring down the mighty NRA! We have the power!” When in reality, looking at the numbers, it’s more likely that their 11th hour endorsement probably hurt McAuliffe’s polling numbers more than it helped him.

The effects of this race on the future of Virginia’s gun laws is yet to be seen, but needless to say it can’t be good. Look forward to more attempts to restrict civil rights in the coming years.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

254 COMMENTS

    • The non-libertarian? How about you hold the Republicans responsible for not choosing a better candidate instead of making excuses?

      • It’s not making excuses when your right. If Sarvis hadn’t had millions of Democat Party dollars to fund his campaign, VA wouldn’t be swearing in a well know and self-proclaimed anti-gun Liberal. If you voted for Sarvis, don’t come here crying when VA is voting to enact a NY, NJ, or CA style set of gun regulations….

        • Blinky, you’re in no position to badger others given how naive and moronic you are. The Obama bundler wanted a TM win so he spent a ton of money getting a fake losertarian on the ballot. And it worked. Because brain dead morons like you can’t see past your own ego.

        • Effing wonderful; the zombies carry the day for the Dems.

          So how is the upper house and the lower house going to swing in VA with a Dem in the governors mansion? It looks like the lower house (of Delegates) will remain safely conservative territory for now. The Senate appears to be 50/50. Anyone up to speed on legislative politics in VA?

          I suspect in VA some Legislative Dems will be unwilling to accommodate incursions into gun rights by the grabber crowd.

        • I doubt BlinkyPete read the entire article and if he did then he has some real sh*tty comprehension skills. It was not just any old democrat voter, it was an Obama booster. It was his money that funded the petition to get this guy on the ballot. I no longer wonder how our country has become the dump it has, I only need to look to people like BlinkyPete.

        • I doubt Leo read the comment I was responding to, or the comment I made for that matter. I said that a single donor, no matter how influential, does not equate to the Democratic Party, and that $150,000 is not “millions”. If you disagree with me, please show your math. I’ve been asking for raise, but if you’re right I guess I might not need one.

      • How about before you vote Libertarian you realize the dude was being funded and supported by big money from the left. The Democrats dumped alot of money into the Libertarian candidate knowing it would take votes away from the Republicans.

        I understand the desire to vote Libertarian, but letting a Democrat win because they split the vote on the right does nothing to help Republicans or Libertarians, or our country as whole.

        Sad day for Virginia

        • If supporters of the major parties don’t like having “their votes” siphoned off by the Libertarian and Green parties, then they either need to field some better candidates, or else work towards changing the voting structure.

        • ding!

          This kind of thing wouldn’t matter if republicans didn’t suck about as hard as the democrats. I’m not going to vote for someone who is willing to throw my 4th, 1st, and 5th Amendments under the bus just because he might play lip service to the 2nd.

    • He wouldn’t have lost if he wasn’t an idiot pushing for retarded policies, like supporting sodomy laws when they were struck down as unconstitutional.

      • Once again, a statement that prove the democrats can lie and morons ^ will believe it.

        KC never pushed such laws. The crap you just spewed are democrat lies.

        • Yeah, anything you don’t agree with is democrat lies… how did theory work out for you in this election, my partisan friend?

    • Yes because we all know libertarians are closet republicans when no libertarian candidate is present. /sarc off

    • based on the unfounded assumption that libertarians are always would-otherwise-be republicans and never would-otherwise-be democrats.

  4. So New Jersey potentially has a more conservative governor than Virginia? WTF?

    (Yes, I know Christie is a RINO)

      • That’s the joke… Terry McAuliffe is going to push for bills on the level of NY Safe Act and Colorado anti-2A level stupidity.

        • Virginians need to prepare contingency plans for 1) opposing his marxist schemes and 2) running a successful recall campaign if he does enact any such nonsense.

        • No conventional recall capability in VA. Only one that is initiated by the Judicial, after failing office or for crimes of significance.

  5. I hope the libertarians who voted for Sarvis enjoy getting screwed over.

    Cuccinelli couldn’t do **** to abortion rights or legally bring back sodomy laws. The Supreme Court struck them all down.

    McAuliffe can make gun owners’ lives a living hell.

    • Yes blame people for wanting some other option rather than having to choose between either Hitler or Stalin. When both of your choices are shit even being able to “throw away” your vote on someone else still shows that there are people who don’t like the way things are going in either of the major parties.

      • Like choosing between a giant douche and a turd sandwich. (two South Park references in one thread).

      • And “throw away” their vote is exactly what they did. Yes, it sucks when your only choices are douche and turd sandwich, but if your vote for douche means the election of a nuclear bomb with a fautly, partially shorted out detonator, then you damn well better vote for turd sandwich….

        • and you assume that all of those sarvis voters all agree on who is the turd sandwich and who is your nuclear bomb.

        • The chance of one vote affecting a state election is, for all intents and purposes, 0%. Therefore your vote was as meaningless as one of theirs.

      • Which is why the Twin Parties strongly oppose a “none of the above” choice on the ballot; they realize that one day, probably very soon, “none of the above” will win a major election. And their entire good cop/bad cop game will be totally de-legitimized.

      • They used to say, “would you rather be hanged or shot?” Nowadays, it’s more like, “would you rather be boiled in oil or flayed alive?”

      • The problem, however, is that when you have three or more candidates on the ballot the one that wins is likely to be a more extreme or fringe candidate who has less support among the the entire population of the state.

        Candidate A: 33%
        Candidate B: 27%
        Candidate C: 21%
        Candidate D: 19%

        Candidate A may get the gubernatorial seat, but 67% of the voters did not vote for him/her.

    • This is why Democrats can win elections. Dems will vote for the Dem and Republicans won’t vote if the candidate isn’t perfect.

      • Just ask any NYer how the republican party is here…the repubs the always cave to the
        Establishment.

        Had Sarvis been the Republican choice, he would have won. But the fucking ideologue GOP with their anti-gay agenda, anti-abortion, anti-gun (like NY for example), war mongering ways (i know the dems are just as bad but the average fool doesnt), THE GOP WILL CONTINUE TO LOSE UNLESS THEY ADOPT THE LIBERTARIAN APPROACH. PLAIN AND FUCKING SIMPLE.

        • Ugh, don’t get me started on Jabba the Hutt. My parents are Republicans but don’t have the mental capacity to understand that a person can run under a political party while opposing nearly everything that party claims to stand for. They voted for White Obama (Romney) and will vote for Chris Christie too, despite being horribly opposed to the policies he’ll push.

      • It is ironic, really, that non-dems in VA fell for essentially the same play that helped McAuliffe’s best pal Bill Clinton win the presidential election against George H.W. Bush in 1992: Clinton ca. 43%, Bush 37%, Ross Perot pulling off nearly 20% of the vote. Lots of pro-Reagan dems turned to Clinton after the Republican convention started trumpeting religious and social conservatism. The economics-only conservatives (i.e. libertarians, independents) voted for Perot, who made his fortune selling IBM mainframes to state and federal agencies (more irony….).

        The right-wing of the Republican voters get so happy when they win the Republican primary. Then they lose the general election. Then they whine. I’m a Republican, and it really pisses me off.

        • Please, vote in your primaries, and convince like-minded people to vote! A solid right-wing party with a solid laissez-faire economic platform that is not marred by issues which a significant proportion of people deem unacceptable is essential to keep the left wing in check and moderate the overall policy when the latter is in charge of the country, within the existing two-party system. When GOP goes full retard on social conservatism, disregarding the public opinion (and hence their chances at the booths), it hurts not only them, but the entire political system.

    • the GOP screwed itself. again. I am glad I didnt have to vote. gun rights. vs womb rights. candidate A wants to control your genitals, candidate B your gun safe.

      With a red legislature, TMAC cant do all that much damage. the election was closer than it should have been. ironically, TMAC bringing in Bloomberg and Obama probably did more to fire up the GOP base than anything Cuc did.

      • Think about the fundamental reason we want the freedom to own firearms. Protect life right? Then you attack people for caring about human life that has no voice, and certainly no gun (you think a fetus would pull the trigger on the guy trying to pull them apart?)
        I don’t care what you do with your genitals, but they come with consequences like your guns — you don’t get to shoot bullets wherever you please and claim no responsibilities for where they land.

        • Yup, makes no sense to me when people claim a woman has a right to “chose” when the woman isn’t the only life involved in the decision.

        • Think about the fundemantals of a right as a whole: the right to choice.

          A fucking egg floating in a tube isnt a baby. Not that i agree with abortions, i wouldnt habe my wofe get one, amd my wife wouldnt get one. Its not our God damned choice to choose what others can and can’t do. I don’t want to hear your religous nonsense because not everybody is religous and believes what you may THINK is right. Just like how christians believe gays go to hell (biggest lie ever told).

      • Womb rights? What about the rights of the Person occupying that womb? Do they not have rights?

        Besides, there is nothing KC could have done to prevent abortions nor could he ban birth control given Supreme Court precedent going back, oh I don’t know, more than 40 years. all this SoCon stuff used against KC was nothing but lies and demagoguery by TM. And it works because most voters are very ill informed people.

        • do you want to live in the world where miscarriages have to be reported to the police and investigated as possible homicides?

      • What a dumb statement. Put a latex covering over your genitals and / or have the lady take some pills and your a whole lot less likely to have something in your lady’s womb. You should have payed attention in health class.

      • If you thought the race was about “womb rights”, you were duped by the MSM. Congrats sheeple… baaaaad job.

      • If you are anti-abortion but you believe the Supreme Court’s opinion will not change, and that therefore abortion will remain legal, then why on earth have your candidate go around indicating he is anti-abortion? Is it to get people to ‘like’ him? It looses a majority of the female voters. Who does it attract, the male voters? Think about it. Now VA has a governor who would like to squeeze the 2nd Amendment to a nullity, likes diverting increasing amounts of taxpayer money to his cronies, and he’s in power because a bunch of guys voted in part based on objection to a practice they can’t actually stop?

        This isn’t Quantum Mechanics. The logic of elections isn’t that difficult. It requires one candidate standing for a relatively conservative platform of valuable, achievable, state and federal behaviors. Gun rights had momentum. Abortion Bans absolutely do not. Putting the words “immigration” and “rats” in the same paragraph is political insanity…and the Latino vote definitely swayed the election. Republicans have become slobs, undisciplined, in their campaign appearance speech, feeling compelled to explain positions which do not need explaining, e.g. Mitt’s “47%” statement. Can’t they keep voters in mind through one entire campaign? Do they have to stoke up voters who are going to vote for them anyway?

      • A fetus is no more a person than a grown squirrel, which can at least survive on its own. Keep your government and religion away from the rest of us, or you’ll keep losing elections. If you have such a problem with abortion just think of all the little souls getting to heaven early.

    • Why do you “feel” entitled to libertarian vote. Guess what, your not. Get over it. Man up and put up a better candidate next time.

      • Libertarians do nothing but help elect far left democrats. even Ron Paul saw Sarvis for the fraud that he is.

      • I honestly don’t know why you libertarian guys keep trying to stick with Republicans. The only thing in common between you two, even formally, is the fiscal policy – but if you look at the actual track record of Republican fiscal policy, it’s just as spendy as Democratic one, they just spend the money that they don’t have (since taxes are slashed). OTOH, on all social and civil rights issues, GOP is the cavemen party, while libertarians have always been on the bleeding edge on the movement.

        • “honestly don’t know why you libertarian guys keep trying to stick with Republicans.”

          Uh huh, tonight’s result sure does prove they “stick with republicans” given that yunno, the pretend libertarian siphoned off 7% of the vote from the, oh right Republicans.

          Asinine, your comment was.

        • Coloradan, you literally do nothing but repeat the same idiotic, unproven gibberish over and over again while ignoring anything anyone says that doesn’t gel with your world view.

          Polls consistently show that 45% of republicans lean libertarian. That reasonably means that no more than half of the votes cast for Sarvis could have gone to your republican buddy. Sure, there are independents and undecideds that could have been swayed as well, but it’s also unlikely that every single ‘pub that leans libertarian voted that way. With that in mind, 50% is probably high.

          Who else is there? Libertarian leaning democrats (I believe they usually poll in the 30’s; I know plenty of them), and, oh, um, Libertarians. You know, the people that actually belong to that party. Bitching at them for not voting for Cuccinelli is like bitching at you for not voting McAuliffe.

          At the end of the day, maybe Sarvis did essentially cost Cuccinelli the election, but it’s completely ridiculous to reflexively blame him and not the man who lost. Which, incidentally, is completely fitting for a party that reflexively blames everyone but themselves.

  7. I live in Va, in fact I stare at DC from my apartment everyday. If the republicans would have run anyone else that was not so socially conservative our rights would be much more secure. The name of the game is winning the independents in NoVa, you do that with conservative economic principles, transportation policy, and civil liberties, not social issues. Crossing my fingers the legislature stays red and T Mac realizes gun control is a non starter for most of Virginia.

    • VA legislature was 67-28 GOP last i checked, that’d be quite a fucking flip for the democrats. And even then, VA has to have some rural pro gun dems that would vote against this garbage. Hell even MA and NJ has pro gun dems left…

    • You can uncross your fingers. it was never even close. The Republicans will win at least 63 seats in the House of Delegates. It was a Pyrrhic victory for Bloomberg. He paid a couple of million dollars and all he got was Terry McAullife.

      • Good; thanks for the VA legislative gouge.

        The governorship alone is a thin victory for Dems, especially with such a slim margin. Without legislative backing, McAuliff will be mostly hamstrung.

      • As someone who knows next to nothing about VA politics, I’m gonna take you at your word and be happy about that.

    • KC didn’t run on social issues. TM did and he lied his ass off about KC’s positions. He even set up robo calls to call conservative voters to claim KC was for abortion on demand and for ObamaCare. TM spent double the money slandering the guy, had a third party losertarian siphon votes away KC and still barely managed to win by a squeaker.

      • How the F does the Coloradan know this and some of my own VA residents don’t?? Seriously people, wake the F up!

      • It doesn’t matter what he “ran” on, he has a proven track record in the office. We’re talking about a guy here who was trying to retain a sodomy law (!!!) on the books. In 2013!

        • Literally anyone of you could have googled this if you were even remotely interested in finding out if it’s true or not. There are soundbites, articles, and videos proving that it is, indeed true.

          Now, granted, the McAuliffe campaign did misrepresent a case tried by Cuccinelli, where he attempted to use the sodomy law against a 40 something sex offender for banging a 17 year old girl, but it still stands that he supported the law. Certainly said sex offender should be treated as such, but it appears that the age of consent in VA is 18, and sexual predators are generally barred from interaction with people under 18, so I don’t understand why he didn’t just push for penalties under those laws. My only guess is that he was seeking to justify the sodomy laws, which were eventually struck down by the state supreme court.

        • Also, I’m not at all convinced that Cuccinelli’s stance that “it’s only for the children” is genuine. After all, only 4 years ago he said, on record:

          “My view is that homosexual acts, not homosexuality, but homosexual acts are wrong. They’re intrinsically wrong. And I think in a natural law based country it’s appropriate to have policies that reflect that. … They don’t comport with natural law. I happen to think that it represents (to put it politely; I need my thesaurus to be polite) behavior that is not healthy to an individual and in aggregate is not healthy to society.”

          That, to me, is a very thinly veiled endorsement for full-fledged sodomy laws.

        • …don’t bother, some people here would disbelieve 2+2=4 if it reflected poorly on their candidate, and then they’d call math a far left conspiracy.

  8. Sarvis voters – enjoy your new gun control laws. Hope you like magazine restrictions, universal background checks on every gun sales or loan, and a brand new assault weapons ban.

    Way to send a message.

    • I’m like twenty minutes from a pretty solid Tennessee gun store. If any of that shit passes I am, out of spite, taking orders for goodies from anyone stuck in the interior of Va. Also, Tennessee liquor stores have grain alcohol if you’d like to bundle your order.

    • Au contraire, it’s a great way to send the message. GOP should be reminded again and again that their conservative and religious fundie wing is the part of the party that drags them down to the bottom, even when they are more convincing on economy. You’d think that lesson was learned with Romney’s defeat, but apparently not. Well, so here we go again. Hopefully all of those things that you’ve listed which will be law in VA soon will keep reminding Republican rank and file members about the wrong choices that they’ve made managing their party.

      • Are you just regergatating stuff you heard on the news? Romney, a conservative, Hahahaha. No. Romney was the establishment neo-statist hand picked candiadate, just as McCain was before him.

        These “wacko birds” you talk about is the republican base. It amazes me that no matter how far left looney a democrat is there is no one calling them that. All people want to do is bash people who believe… In that constitution. Limited government. Family values. Whoa what crazies!

        • Yes Jerry; everyone that disagrees with the GOP establishment is a commie and thus, our enemy. Let’s review this conversation in 2020, and again in 2030 and see how that political philosophy is working out for you.

        • Romney was, of course, not a true conservative – that’s why he flip flopped on so many issues after the primaries. But he was pretending to be an extreme conservative because that’s what he needed to pander to the loud voices in the party and to win the primaries. Sadly, the overall climate in GOP today is that economics and everything else takes second place after all this “family values” BS.

          Oh, and speaking of “family values” – why can’t you “small government” types keep your family values in your families? Why does it always have to be about what the other people cannot say or do?

      • The exits polls gave McAuliffe a +9 with women voters. That suggests that social issues were not the deciding factor in the race. The gender gap isn’t based on abortion. It is based on single women, particularly single mothers, substitution of the state for a male partner. That suggests that the Libertarian claim that supperting abortion will attract women voters is false. Abortion is not what attracts male-less women. Big government programs are the draw. Only a few fanatics vote on the other two big social issues, drugs and gay sex. The election shows that what we call social issues are merely a reflection of other more important factors in determining how people vote. Social anarchists like you are the only ones who vote on these issues. The people who you denigrate as social conservative will vote for a candiate that they disagree with on social issues if they are conservatives.

        To you social anarchists drug rights, sex rights and abortion rights trump all other rights.

      • Commie? Did I say that? badly misinformed, but not commie. By the way blinky, do you get a pass on 2A restrictions for being a libertarian? I doubt you and I wil be discussing anything in 2020 bubba.

        • I think you responded to the wrong comment, but you’re right, you didn’t say commie. It was your inference, though, and your attitude overall. Also, I didn’t mean we were actually going to have a discussion or anything. Like, I mean, you can keep 2020 open for whatever else you want to do. I just meant that the Republicans are habitually losing, failing to increase their base or evolve, and that in 2020, and particularly 2030, we’re going to see the tables turned massively in the favor of liberals if we don’t start approaching this strategically rather than tactically. And by we I mean people other than you and Coloradan. You guys just get back to your pity party.

          In fact, why don’t you just plan that for 2020 – I think it’s gonna be a big one for ya’ll.

        • Some of them sure are, and the people running the party are completely clueless. Regardless, my comment was in the context of the question I was answering, which is that the republicans control the legislature and will continue to, thus kinda invalidating the reason for all the crocodile tears around here. But please, but all means, continue blaming us and learning nothing from this failure. It’s not a sign of things to come or anything.

    • Assembly 67-28 GOP. Senate is 20-20 last i checked. Safe hands unless the pubs lose 20 seats, which doesn’t seem likely.

      • But dear blinky, gun rights in Va are safe for now because of republican control of the state house correct? The same reason the attempted federal restrictions failed in the senate, and had no chance in the house, because of republicans. My party is not perfect, but they have the resources and organization to win, yours not so much. And if the liberals do win a grand victory, you and I will be surrendering our 2A rights together.

        • I feel like you need to review the terms “strategy” and “redistricting”. My point isn’t that you don’t have the resources to win (although here it looks like you didn’t), or that most Pub’s don’t support gun rights (they do, with notable exceptions of course), it’s that you don’t have a long term strategy, and that your policies are backwards and repugnant to many people.

          Jerry, you feel sorry for yourself and your party all you want; I’m not repeating myself to someone who either can’t or won’t read the things I say.

    • Oh blinky, I understand what you are saying very well, you are not some towering intellect that the rest of us can’t follow. My point is that you can bash republicans as being idiots and out of touch, and yet you are sheltered from new gun restrictions because they are in control of the legislature. Wanting to protect the life of an unborn child does not make you a nut or out of touch. Liberals, and libertarians apparently, want no restrictions on the practice. To conservatives that is unacceptable and will always be so. What strategy, pray tell, does the libertarian party have going forward? You cant ally yourselves with dems, they are adamantly opposed to the civilian ownership of firearms. They are also opposed to you keeping the money that you earn, and the health insurance plan that you may have had. So where to you go pal? You libertarians act as if you are exempt and not affected by anti-2A legislation, or the appointment of liberal judges. How about this, you and I just agree that we don’t like one another and will never see eye to eye, deal? Awesome.

  11. I am sure they will try to pretend this was a mandate for gun control, but TMAC was up double digits pre- Bloomburg.

    This is not a win for TMAC as much as a loss for the GOP. if they had put up someone who does not feel the need to tell women what with their womb, maybe Cucc. would have won.

    Still, let TMAC overreach. razor thin elections are the stuff recalls are made of.

    • Sadly, it’s going to take years of continual losses for Republicans to even think about ditching the religious nutjobs.

      • No. We don’t have recalls unless initiated by the courts and only after specific criminal mischief or failure to execute office.

    • I couldn’t care less what a woman does with her womb or the rest of her body for that matter. What I care about is the Child’s life that is being selfishly discarded in the name of convenience and lack of person responsibility.

      • a five year old is a child. A fetus is a bundle of cells with no memory, experiences, or life other than floating around in someone else’s belly. Don’t agree? Okay, don’t worry, I’m not going to make you have an abortion (or be gay, or whatever other religious hangups you have). But when you try to legislate your morality against mine, don’t expect support just because the democrats are bad on the gun issue. Thank yourself as the republican party becomes a regional power only in the deep south.

    • That’s why I couldn’t cast a vote for governor. Personally, I do believe abortion is the taking of a human life. But I’m not going to impose that belief on anyone else; it’s their karma.

      • So, to paraphrase, you believe that taking human life is wrong, but you don’t think other people should have to respect life if they don’t want to…that may be the single most contradictory statement I have ever seen in my life. Why don’t we just let all murderers do their thing? Why not give free reign all criminals, or tyrannical governments even? We wouldn’t want to force a different set of beliefs on any of them; It’s their karma after all. How about instead of beliefs, we set standards that protect a person’s rights from legally sanctioned violation. I only support laws and government intervention to protect the real, physical and bodily property rights of a person and I can’t think of anything that more succinctly meets that criteria than preventing an innocent life from being callously slaughtered just because society wants to have their cake and eat it too.

        • The society – well, at least the majority of it – does not believe the fetus to be “a Person”. Not anymore so than an egg in the womb, either one second before or one second after being fertilized. The only way one can think of a fertilized egg as a person is due to religious convictions about when soul is imparted etc; there’s no material, objective reason to do so.

          • “religious convictions about when soul is imparted”

            And even that’s a cognitive dissonance:

            Genesis 2:7: “Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”

            So God Herself says that life as a separate being begins when it receives the Divine Breath of Life.
            In fact, I’ve heard of cases where, when a dead newborn is found in a dumpster, they check its lungs. If it has never breathed, then it’s a stillbirth. If it has breathed, it’s a homicide.

            I don’t know if the laws are still like that, but it’s good enough for me.

            And, of course, the full-bottom line is Property Rights, i.e., Self-Ownership.

        • I do not think its a contradiction. The left wants to save the children by taking away guns and jobs (by imposing absurd environmental rules). The right wants to save the children by restricting what people do with their genitals, which includes blocking contraception and morning-after pills. The Sierra club wants to save children… of condors.

          See how that works? Most anti-gun people consider themselves pro-life too. So does the Sierra club, some of whom think animals deserve the same life rights and people.

          The govt cannot possibly be everyone’s nanny or pastor. Up to a certain point, people need to be free to make immoral choices, and the consequences need to be between them and god.

          • And both wings of the statist party want to deny the sovereignty/self-ownership of the individual.

      • “That’s why I couldn’t cast a vote for governor…” What? Your choices and philosophical ruminations are over when the primaries are over. After that you simply have a binary choice. You vote for the candidate who is least bad. It has always been that way and always will be in a two-party non-parliamentary system. Your excuse for not voting makes no sense except to the laughing left-wingers. They just say “who’s the dem candidate?” Then they pull the lever. Because they’re so dumb they’re smart.

        • Wrong. Parties continually look at electoral strategy through the last election. If they see that they couldn’t get any votes from moderates, and that their fundy right wing candidates with their enraged bases can’t win a general election, hopefully they’ll stop nominating them. And if they can’t change because of the entrenched primary system, the party will implode and reform.

          Pulling the lever for the least bad candidate has been giving us the same shit for decades. Might as well try something new.

          • Maybe the Tea Party Patriots and the Libertarians should get together and launch something like the LiberTea Party.

    • You apparently haven’t the slightest clue what you are talking about. The Coloradan (see above) can see the truth, how can you not? If you are a resident of VA, you are the problem. You fell for the media BS hash sling, as they carried the Terry and Bloomberg water message to you. Thanks, thanks for not researching and thanks for only hearing what you wanted to hear. If you aren’t a Virginian, why are you opining on my state’s politics?

      • In the exact same comment you endorsed the opinion of someone from Colorado and then demanded to know why anyone outside of VA was sharing their opinion. Well done sir.

        • Since reading comprehension is not your forte, I will explain. If the Coloradan can see it, plain as day, how can a Virginia resident not see it. Same reason I don’t want foreigners offering an opinion on my country, I don’t want people outside of Virginia also offering an opinion on my state’s politics. If you don’t live here, you don’t really have a valid opinion, do you? “I’m going to offer an opinion on a Ford, even though I’ve never owned a Ford”, sort of shows a level of ignorance that should be criticized. People ought to opine on subjects that they have either experience or relevance attached, anything else is intellectually dishonest. Unless you are the type that fosters and welcomes ignorant opinions…. I’m not one of those type of people.

          Does that about sum it up nice enough for you, or should I break out the Crayons, again?

        • If you want to play with crayons I’m not going to stop you. Whatever gets you through the day.

          Here’s your exact comment, by the way –

          “The Coloradan … can see the truth, how can you not …. If you aren’t a Virginian, why are you opining on my state’s politics?”

          Literally, two diametrically opposed concepts. “Listen to what this person outside my state has to say, don’t say anything if you don’t live inside my state.” You keep throwing around terms like ‘reading comprehension’ and ‘research’ but I’m not entirely convinced you know what they mean. I’ve talked to you on several threads over the past couple days and not once have I seen you come up with a compelling, logical argument for your point of view, and your penchant for calling names, talking down to people and blaming everyone that disagrees with you for all your problems leads me to believe that you don’t actually have one.

          Now you have fun with those crayons. The grownups have some work to do.

        • Since you seem to think I can’t put forth a logical argument, how about I tear down yours. First, your quote isn’t my “exact comment”, it’s chopped up. Secondly, the point was that someone else (presumably from out of state, with a name like “Coloradan”) managed to get an accurate picture on my state’s politics, yet supposedly someone from within my state’s boundaries couldn’t. Third, please show me proof where I had a “penchant for calling names” or where I “blaming everyone that disagrees with you for all your problems”. I don’t believe I ever called anyone names, nor did I blame anyone for my problems, let alone even claimed I had problems.

          If you want to get into the logical, you clearly absented yourself from that conversation with the aforementioned examples. While I don’t disagree with your assessment or assertion that I talk down to people on occasion, I’ve actually been tame in these threads. I offered in one, that if you didn’t understand what I was plainly writing, perhaps I would have been better served using smaller words or bright colors. You claimed that you understood my point, but disagreed still and provided your reasons for that disagreement. I ceased debating the subject with you, since you made your point and I made mine. You acknowledged that simple point, so I didn’t feel the need to belabor it.

  13. Point one:doesn’t a margin below 5% trigger a recount?

    Point two:the Illinois Syndrome is alive and well.For those not aware, that’s when there’s enough concentrated moonbats to ensure only one county really matters on election day.In Illinois, current anti gun governor Quinn won literally two counties out of 100+:and one of them was Cook County, home to Chicago and it’s 3 million voters.Downstate IL voters don’t have mathematical chance in hell of breaking the cycle, short of Chicago seceding from the state.Ditto NY vis a vis NYC, California with LA, and other states.Texas may be next on the list……

    • In Virginia it is a 1% margin that triggers a recount. Looks like we will have one for the AG office. That office may be more damaging to gun rights than the governor’s office. Today was a very bad day for the 2nd amendment and all of freedom and liberty in Virginia.

  14. I was going to write yet another post about how the GOP should practice what it preaches and take responsibility for it’s loss and disconnect with voters, or how Sarvis’ final numbers aren’t even in yet so we don’t actually know if he actually made a difference, or that McAuliffe can’t just magically click his heals and pass bans, but logic doesn’t seem to be reasonating right now, so instead I’ll just put this here:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owzhYNcd4OM

    • This.

      Cuccinelli could’ve won if he had shut his f–king trap about reproductive rights et al, thus making the idea of voting for a libertarian without the social issues baggage a lot less tempting to voters who aren’t focused on gun rights. Sarvik may have been an Obama plant and ultimately about as libertarian as Nader but this was the GOP and Cuccinelli’s race to lose. Looking at the razor thin margins of this election and the recalls in Colorado, hopefully the mostly red VA legislature is cautious about moving in lockstep with Bloomberg’s newly installed Gun Grabber Puppet v. 2.0. That’s about the best we can hope for at this stage.

      • Cucinnelli never opened his mouth on abortion beyond a note in his election flyer. McAuliffe made $hit up and wymen went for the lie. He scrupulously stayed away from the hot button issues.

        • The candidate is not judged solely on what he says as the official part of his campaign, but also on his past track record. Cuccinelli has a solid track record of extreme social conservative, and he made his position on abortion crystal clear in the past. If you don’t want candidate’s past political positions (which he never otherwise repudiated) biting him in the ass in more recent election, then don’t run candidates with questionable past positions – it’s as simple as that.

        • I have read your postings on this story and it’s pretty clear that you are the mirror image of the so-called “right wing religious wacko.” So you think that stopping Cuccinelli because you don’t like his positions on “sexual rights” even though he can’t legally act on them than preserving rights written in the Constitution. You would rather see McAulife loot the state because he supports your positions on social issues. It’s your choice to give up your political rights for sex and abortion.

        • Tdniiva, you act like the only thing abortion advocates are worried about is a total ban on abortion. That isn’t true any more than the only thing we’re worried about is a total ban on guns. Would you be fine with a law that said you have to have a medical device shoved up your ass every time you buy a gun? No? Then don’t say that people that care about a women’s right to get an abortion have nothing to worry about. It’s ridiculous.

          You also seem to lack the fundamental understanding of the concept of other people. I have plenty of friends that don’t have guns, but respect my rights as a gun owner. That said, I can’t expect them to make that a number one issue. If a gay person or a woman chose McAuliffe over Cuccinelli, I’d still casually chastise them for choosing the lesser of two evils, but I’d understand why they made their choice, just as I understand why you’ve made yours.

        • Maybe, eventually, guys are going to realize that female voters don’t think its OK to be a candidate who is “oh, by the way, and it probably won’t matter….” against abortion. Even a hint that the candidate would jump on an anti-abortion bandwagon, given a little momentum, is enough for a majority of women to vote “for the other guy.” Get it or don’t get it. I’ll be fine either way.

          There is no social issue left except these, your money and your freedom. Nothing else you care about matters politically. Any belief secondary to your ability to keep more of your money and personal freedom matters, because losing on those two issues will lead inevitably to losing on the others. Someone else’s fetus isn’t your issue. If you can’t prevent your own family from seeking abortions, that isn’t our problem or political, it’s your problem and familial. But, notch up the taxes for redistribution to democrat voters and restrict the guns to trivial items…and you won’t matter. You’ll be a political non-entity, like an old communist or white supremacist, yesterday’s papers, sitting there wondering why abortion is still legal, but your gun ain’t, and you aren’t getting to decide where your money goes.

        • > You would rather see McAulife loot the state because he supports your positions on social issues.

          I would rather see a candidate win who is both pro-gun and recognizes other personal freedoms. In this election, such a candidate was a libertarian.

      • These kinds of statements just prove how affective the lying machine of the democrat left is. KC never talked about social issues. TM spent millions slandering the man and lying about his positions and dullards like you bought it hook line and sinker.

      • I’m going to chime in, even though the other two pretty much covered it. You are the problem…. Stop listening to the media PR machine feeding your head. Seriously, stop. If you are a Virginian and you thought this, or you told others this, you are the problem. If you aren’t a Virginian and you told Virginians this, you are the problem. I was initially upset, only mildly earlier this evening, but more so after reading some of the commentary here. Some of you here, Virginian or not, are so misled and far from reality, that it’s astonishing.

      • [Not] [t]his.

        There. Fixed it for ‘ya.

        Hate to say it, folks, but Coloradan & Charlie Kilo have it right on this one.

        • They have it right? Tell that to the voters. One minute the two are noting that KC didn’t talk about abortion except “for a little comment in his campaign flyer.” The next minute they’re implying that voters were stupid and fell for dem slander if they though KC was running on a religious and anti-abortion stand.

          The art of propaganda is the art of relying on half-truths. KC set himself up to be half-truthed to death with his little asides on immigration and abortion. I no longer live in northern Virginia, and I also don’t believe TM’s election will dramatically affect gun rights in Virginia. But, it matters a great deal that Republican primary voters start to understand elections. Governorships and, above all, statewide US Senate elections, matter.

    • Every comment made in support of voting for the rank and file GOP simply because we’re scared of the other big party has only reinforced my image of Republicans today as a bunch of whiny, childish sore losers that preach small government, personal responsibility and law limited to the constitution and practice anything but. You can cross your arms, stamp your feet and cry foul (or just cry) all you want, but it’s your party that’s losing these elections for you, not mine.

  16. Send all thank you letters to:
    Robert Sarvis
    C/o Sarvis for Governor 2013
    P.O. Box 224
    Annandale, Virginia 22003

  17. I have opened a bottle of cheep wine.
    I hate seeing the loss, but he is being gracious in his loss.
    We will continue to fight.

    • [SLAP] yourself out of it, man. He can’t control the legislature. If Warner or Kaine couldn’t do it, why would you think McAuliffe can? You’re not into the whiskey too deep, are you?

    • Time to get out my Reality Checkbook.

      Libertarians:Your choices have consequences.So be it, then, that you find both ballot options identically repulsive.That’s the place many of us were in 2012 .I didn’t vote libertarian because the damage another Obama administration would wreak on this nation was worth gambling via picking Romney,even if I idealogically despised both candidates .So, I hope you all remember your intellectual integrity.You’ll need it when the VA State Police come ’round to register your guns and mags.

      As to the Libertarian party ,sorry kids:it’s a red herring, a practical joke even bigger then the other two parties combined.Take a look around you ,put down the Ron Paul biography, and ask yourself-do your neighbors REALLY want a society with a smaller government?
      The answer, for me at least, is a flaming hell no.The very concept of an American society without Social Security, DHS,TSA,FBI,ATF,HUD,DHD,DoE(Education),DoE(Energy),EPA,FDIC,and various state bureaucracies is beyond our electorate.

      Look at a history book libertarians, and tell me:which society has ever downsized its government willingly?
      Go ahead, I’ll wait.Youll need a permit from the soon to be created Department of Knowledge first, and the paperwork takes weeks…..

      Put simply:the concept of Libertarianism is slightly less repulsive then cannibalism to our national scene.America will sooner adopt Sharia law then elect a true libertarian to office.

      As such, please get off the intellectual high horse ,grab a shovel, and join the rest of us in the metaphorical sandbag line.It’s all hands on deck to make sure we don’t follow England and Austrailia into the flooded cesspool of civil disarmament.There is no room for pretentious voting out of a false sense of intellectual integrity.

      • So basically what you’re saying is that you’re okay with big government, so long as it regulates the areas of life and restricts civil rights and freedoms that you don’t care about and which don’t concern you directly, even if other people’s freedoms are curtailed.

        This is precisely why gun control lobby will win in the end. You guys are like pastor Niemoller… you keep silent (in fact, many of you even cheer happily) when they come for the Jews and the communists, and when they’ll come for you – and they will come for you, whether Republicans or Democrats, make no mistake on that – there will be no-one left.

  19. This sucks. Realize however that Cuccinelli was down 12 points recently. And Sarvis grabbed 5-6%. And it was still close. This was soon after Obamacare hit the fan. It’s going to get worse for the Dems. A lot worse.

  22. Yes, they will trumpet their great victory. Inside, however, they are crapping their paints. This was supposed to be a blowout. Yet with 98% in it’s less than a 2% election. Everyone knows without Sarvis Cucinelli would have won. Everyone knows with another week of bad Obamacare news Cucinelli may well have won. The Republican AG may still win and the VA house looks like it will remain in Republican control. Which means passing any of the bullshit McAuliffe has been spouting is going to be tough.

    And let’s not forget that Chris Christie vetoed most of the Anti-gun agenda, earning the ire of the Shannon Watts of the world.

    So bad, but not nearly as bad as it could have been.

  23. Congratulations to all Virginians on their annexation by New York City.

    Now bend over and grab your ankles.

  24. READ THIS:

    http://www.nationalreview.com/article/362992/uniting-right-david-horowitz

    Progressivism is a totalitarian ideology. Its adherents have to be stopped at the goddamn ballot boxes even if that means voting for a bible-thumper who can’t possibly ban abortion, re-institute sodomy laws that were struck down by the USSC, or block gay marriage.

    Those issues are over so stop falling for the lie that Republicans can do anything about them. They can’t.

    I’m a libertarian but you have to be an idiot to prefer a gun-banning leftist over an ineffectual Republican.

    If you want to get libertarians elected you have to fight it out in the Republican primaries. The GOP is the ONLY vehicle libertarians can use to get into office.

    • This. Let’s have our fights in the primaries, and then stop throwing elections to the Dems in the general elections. Don’t like where the GOP is? Me neither. Be active in the primaries.

      • Amen!! I hate what the Republicans have become. I mean really running Newt motherf*cking Gingrich and Mitt Romney!?!? The Republicans ain’t put up all that good a candidate in a long long time. The last decent one they put up was Bush v2.0. Since then they seem to pick the richest most out of touch bureacratic white guy they can find bonus points if they’re a christian extremist ( catholic, mormon,baptist, it don’t matter). Gay marriage and abortion are done deals regardless of anyone’s thoughts on the matter. Pleas for the love of God GOP stop beating the dead horse.

    • Completely agree. Why, though, is an ‘obvious truth’ so in need of public statement? Here’s why: Because in Republican primaries the numbers, turnout, continually favor hot-button emotional socially conservative issues. Those Republican voters vote, hoping once again for some sort of vindication for their preferences. At the same time the big-money Republican players retain control of the party apparatus, funding, hoping to score a tax benefit or spending reward down the road. You can’t win a Republican party primary just on a ‘smaller government, more freedom, less debt’ platform. “There’s no there there” during primary season. How fortunate we are in the meantime that state legislative majorities are built district by district.

  25. Democrats are creating a block of states from Maine to NC under liberal control. Not good. PA is the last one and they might pull that one off next.
    VA gun rights are officially in danger.

  26. The fact is if you voted for the “libertarian” in this race you in fact voted for McAuliffe.

    I’m sorry but it is what it is. You can bitch and moan all you want about how it’s the GOP’s fault that you help elect a anti-gunner. It’s your fault and now you have to live with it.

  27. Already the a-holes are blaming the Libertarians. And one of the many a-holes is accusing the Libertarians of being a “liberal plant”! Stupid, ignorant kneejerk, inept Repugnicon relics.

    My brief response [to that Facebook thread], cuz I do not have patience to deal with morons anymore–
    “If the Repugnicons cannot build a coalition to oppose the DemoRats it is on them, not the third (actually genuine second party) voter. Show me one, just ONE Founders’ document that defines America as a two party enterprise. Just ONE. To criticize one for voting their conscience–standing in integrity for their values— is intellectually dishonest.”

    I remember my old man bitching that Clinton won the election because of Perot and the Libertarians. They wouldn’t do as they were told after all. Never mind the Repugnicons trotted out a tired old glue factory nag in Bob Dole that drove away young voters like kissing your mustached grandma and have her slip you tongue….

    • @ Marcus
      It’s one thing to vote your conscience in times of comfort and relative safety, but another to fall on your sword in times of great challenge and controversy such as it is with gun control – unless of course you don’t care about preserving our Constitutional protections and firearms freedoms.

    • Your old man was right. That aside, how is it “standing up for your principles” to vote 100% of your preferences with a certainty of losing, rather than voting 60% of your principles, with a likelihood of victory. Elections are like probability theory: It is vital to take into account what will likely happen before you place your small bit of influence, your vote, at the betting window. How can you call it “voting for your principles” when the predictable outcome of your third-party vote is that rather than sustain 60% of your principles, you contribute to the the fail of 90% of them? It really is about how many of your principles live through the actual election/governance cycle. You’ll never get 100%.

  28. “To criticize one for voting their conscience–standing in integrity for their values— is intellectually dishonest.”

    For that, I thank you. I value my conscience above all political expediencies – and politics is mostly expediencies.

    But no one accused “the Libertarians” of throwing the race to the Democrats; they accused Sarvis of that.
    What the Libertarian Party’s role in the entire affair was is not clear yet. But it will be.

    • I mention the Libertarians because that was something I saw in a Facebook thread. When an ersatz “Republican” loses an election the beltway barflies will blame a third party for not behaving and tying a leg and an ankle to the Repugnicon three legged race.

      I grew up with Goldwater stickers on my looseleaf binder. My family was hard core conservatives.
      In college in the 70s I was the biker that was right wing, pro gun, and heavy metal. Shocked the hell out of a lot of people. (I looked really mean, but was very good natured) .
      The Repugnicons no longer represent my interests. They are incapable of establishing a kill box and incapable of an effective defense.
      And yes I am hard core: I fly the Betsy Ross on flag days because in my heart the 50 star flag gov’t doesn’t represent me.

      • Every time the Republicans lose an election, they blame libertarians. They are too arrogant to admit that they nominate candidates that the majority don’t support.

      • The AG’s race is a good proxy for what a two party race for governor would have looked like. The Democratic candidate Mark Herring used the same lines of attack against Republican Mark Obershain. It’s not over yet but it appears that Obershain will eke out a narrow win. He is up by 7000 votes with 7 precincts left to report. Cuccinelli would have won without the false flag Libertarian.

        • False flag? You mean Sarvis was a Democratic plant?

          I’m not sure you can compare this with the AG race, since there was so much more money spent on advertising to destroy the character of Cuccinelli than whoever the Republican AG candidate was.

          Here’s some more exact reporting of the exit polls: http://www.nytimes.com/projects/elections/2013/general/virginia/exit-polls.html

          Sarvis, the libertarian, got 7% of liberals, 10% of moderates and only 3% of conservatives. And if we assume that liberals self-identify as moderates more than conservatives do (there’s some suggestion of this in the numbers), the disparity is probably even greater. It looks to me like Sarvis helped Cuccinelli.

        • Yes you can. The vote totals were about the same for each race. The Democrats used the same tactics about Obershain that used against Cuccinelli. The voter base was the same. You are in Massachusetts, I am in Virginia so you can forgiven for not knowing how each reach was interconnected. And I see that AG race is now a dead heat.

        • …not a false flag. He was completely supported and endorsed by the LP. People cross donate all the time (republicans do it too), and according to the poll number above it didn’t help anyway.

          Seriously, we need a moratorium on that term. I’m getting a headache from slapping my forehead every time I see it.

        • tdiinva, you’re in VA and I’m in MA… fair enough. But I think my point stands — much more money went into negative ads against the Republican in the Governor’s race than the Republican in the AG race.

  29. We need republicans to forget about gay folks and abortion so they can more effectively assert their economic policies.

    (I’m pretending for a moment that they aren’t crony capitalist authoritarian statists just like the democrats.)

  30. Here’s why the GOP is in trouble.

    When Obama said he wasnt coming after our guns, who here believed him?

    That’s what I thought. Yet, this is what a GOP candidate sounds like to a liberal voter concerned with Abortion rights.Lets say the GOP ,for the sake of argument, adopted abortion rights as a platform tomorrow.

    The voters who care about those issues would say “yeah right ” and vote Democrat anyways.Why chance a flip flopping Republican when you know the Democrats have credibility on the issue?

  31. And so it begins listening to news this evening. The democrats will chip away at VA and do to it what they did to CO to make it a blue state.

    • I said this above but FYI the Republicans will control the House of Delegates by at least 26 seats. There will be no new gun laws. There be no medicaid expansion. If Mark Obershain’s lead hold up there will be no loot for McAuliffe and his friends to cart off because the AG will be a Republican. Also the SCOTSVA is very strict with the Second Amendment or I should say Article I Section 13 of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

  32. It is a perspective of ignorance to say if the “third party” were not present Cooch would have won. To assume the 3Voters would come out in droves to support your “lesser of two evils” is to present an arrogance that is the destruction of Repugnicon electability.

    Who do these royalist beltway masters think they are to assume and impose party subservience upon another individual?
    Repugnicons lost this election as they did with Dolen’t, Boosh, and McCain’t. The VA Repugnicons controlled by Washingtoon beltway fat cats wanted a defeat because they are hell bent on destroying any challenge to their beltway.
    The Rinos are the “go along get along, lose the election and then bitch about the Demorats”–Party Platform.
    And while they bitch, they “reach across the aisle” and tickle each others’ genitals…
    Not only are the Parties in cahoots but they both crave absolute power.

    • [There needs to be a longer time window for edits. I see grammar and punctuation I would amend to make my scree a bit more coherent…. an issue of typing too fast and spitting nails….]

      Here is my slight amended bellowing…

      It is a perspective of ignorance to say if the “third party” were not present Cooch would have won the VA election.
      To assume the 3Voters would come out in droves to support your “lesser of two evils” is to present an arrogance that is the destruction of Repugnicon electability.

      Who do these royalist beltway masters think they are to assume and impose party subservience upon another individual?

      Repugnicons lost this election as they did with Dolen’t, Boosh, and McCain’t. The VA Repugnicons, controlled by Washingtoon beltway fat cats, wanted a defeat because they are hell bent on destroying any challenge to their beltway monopoly.

      The Rinos are the “go along, get along, lose the election and then bitch about the Demorats”–Party Platform.

      And while they bitch, they “reach across the aisle” and tickle each others’ genitals…
      Not only are the Parties in cahoots but they both crave absolute power.

      • Cuccinelli was a Tea Party favorite and about as conservative as they come. That is partially what hurt him a good deal in the election. If his views on abortion hadn’t turned off so many women and blue voters, the gap would likely have been smaller, and then he might have won. And that’s discounting if he’d also been able to get more money to spend.

        • See my post above. Mark Obenshain is likely to win a narrow victory for AG. The Democrats used the same tactics against him that they used against Cuccinelli. Sorry, but without the third party Cuccinelli wins.

  33. Obamacare’s rollout likely played a huge role in the results, and this has huge implications for 2014, as McAuliffe was a shoe-in a week ago and just barely won. A few more days and/or some more money and Cuccinelli might have pulled it off.

    Cuccinelli also was scene as a hardcore conservative which thus cost him women and more blue votes. If he was scene as a more moderate GOPer on the social issues, he likely would not have had the gap he had with McAuliffe in the first place, and probably won.

    • First and foremost, don’t believe these “polls”. Half of them are worthless and the other half are outright lies. How many times have the “pre election polls” been debunked or proven horribly inaccurate in the past? I can’t give you a number, since it’s quite frequent and I’ve lost count.

      Second, Cuccinelli was seen as a hardcore conservative because that’s how the McAuliffe/Bloomberg machine made him out to be. Even Politifact called BS on some of the McAuliffe campaign smear attempts. If anything, this proves that the media will carry the water for the Dems and that the sheeple will blindly swallow it up. Baaaaad voters.

      Color me shocked….

      • He was lied about I am sure, but when you say things like God is punishing the United States for abortion, it’s going to raise eyebrows in a state that is purple to purple/blue.

  36. I love how all of the “I want the GOP to be the Democrat party, save on gun rights” guys seem to be clueless about politics. Many would not have voted for him who did had he been pro-abortion

    At best, 50/50 anti-abortion versus pro-abortion in this country (most polls show the pro life side edging out, but that depends on how it is worded). What you guys are demanding is that half of this country not be listened to. Very anti-democratic of you.

    Here is a better strategy. Rather than demanding ideological conformity to your pseudo-libertarianism by Republicans, how about working to create a broad base for gun rights in both parties? Sort of how the progressives (for good or ill) did in the early 20th century?

    That is the best hope for any particular issue. Sadly our system looks to create two big tents. You cannot expect either one to alienate much of its main constituents over your pet issue.

    For me, I agree with neither party. But I disagree with Republicans less than Democrats. Both, e.g., want taxes to fall more heavily on the constituents of the other (see any economic analysis of tax plans), but at least the GOP gives lip service to lower taxes (which moderates that)…even if only lip service.

    I know for myself, and I no longer live in VA sadly, I would never have voted for a pro-abortion candidate no matter how pro-gun he was. If you believe that it is the killing of a human life (and if you don’t, let not argue that here), it would be bizarre to subordinate that issue to an issue dealing with the means to protect life. To demand someone to adopt another political stance, well that is asking them to say to themselves “I believe it is a human being, but screw it to get political power I will support killings.” You may disagree with the belief, but you have to be a very bad person to think one could hold that belief, act against it and be a person you want in office.

  37. Hahaha. Not enough Rep. voters came out. Every gun owner in VA. Should of voted. The 2016 elections will be the Republicans to lose.

    • What makes you think they didn’t? Sadly gun rights are a low priority for a lot of voters until it’s too late. WV keeps sending back Senators who try to destroy those rights because their parents vote democrat because their parents voted Democrat and so on and so on.

  38. If our pro-gun politician had won we’d be crowing like a rooster just like the anti-gunners.

    So, no. I’m not gonna complain. Virginian gun owners will just have to work a little harder. That way, when they win, the victory will be much sweeter.

  39. Virginia is not the place to find a victory for 2A rights, I would have said that in advance if I knew people had their hopes up for this race. Northern Virginians were some of the most annoying, stuck up liberals on my college campus. I’m surprised it was as close as it was.

  40. Well, we’re screwed in VA. What drives me up the wall is the fact that the voter turnout was ridiculously in the Democrats favor, there was less than 1k voters in most of the southern VA counties, pretty much NOVA won the election for TM. And NOVA is filled with the libs from MD/NJ/NY/DC. And this thing about abortion, why cant you just close your legs or tell the guy to wrap up? Obviously I’m not female but I just dont understand why that is such a hot ticket item.

  42. One of the things that strikes me after reading most of the comments is the whole blame game thing going on. For a group such as our selves that purport to believe in personal responsibility, and a group such as the GOP who at least claim to believe in personal responsibility, everyone sure is blaming all in existence but the GOP for their loss.

    Did the Dems cheat by misrepresenting KC’s positions, sure. Did they lie and distort and pull every little trick in the book, of course. That’s politics and I’m sure the GOP wasn’t far behind in their effort to misrepresent the Dem. If they weren’t, they should have been. This isn’t checkers, this is politics.

    But the GOP didn’t vet KC in a primary, they picked him in a convention. It was easy to paint the guy as an extreme social conservative because that is what the guy is and he has a record of being socially conservative throughout his political life. That might be good in some places, but in modern VA, being that socially conservative is going make getting elected governor a challenge.

    Yet, the GOP still had a chance. The Dems, being stupid, put forth a sleezy way left ahole as their canidate. Then, as Dem success looked imminent, they gave KC another chance by having a pile of dung jumped on board the Dem’s canidacy at the last minute. Had the GOP presented someone who represented the electorite a little better, they probably would have won.

    Whatever we do folks, lets not pretend that the GOPs loss was anyone’s but the GOP’s. Otherwise, we’ll be wondering why the Dems won again in four years.

    • So, all republicans have to do is nominate someone who supports abortion on demand, federally funded of course, gay marriage, higher taxes AND support gun rights? Yeah, not happening. By the way pal, if Hillary is elected, Libertarians will suffer just like conservatives. You are not exempt. But at least you can come on sites like this and tell everyone you stuck to your principles, whatever they are.

      • If people like you would pull your head out of your ass for one second and vote for the best candidate instead of “the lesser evil”, the best candidate would *win*. You are your own worst enemy by going into every election saying that you won’t vote for the best candidate.

        • Told to pull my head out of my ass by the likes of you? A conspiracy theorist nut case. STFU. Your God Ron Paul is as crazy as you are by the way.

          • What part of supporting, upholding, and defending the Constitution is it that you deem to be “crazy?”

      • if you want to move the country to the right, you need a seat at the negotiating table. To have a seat at the negotiating table, you need to win elections. To win elections, sometimes you have to compromise. Half of VA voters said Cucc was too conservative on social issues. You can shout all you want, but you don’t win games from the bench.

        • Shouting? Just stating facts. Libertarians cannot win general elections. Period. Refute what I said partner. If Hillary is elected, you will suffer just like I will. I guess we are at what you would call an impasse. Libertarians like you will not vote for conservatives, and Conservatives like me will not vote for the likes of Sarvos or Jarvis or whatever the hell the chumps name is. So there you are. Have a great day. Or not. Don’t care.

        • Wow Jerry,

          In the time it took for me to respond to your post, you were having a full on hissy fit. Fortunately the fate of this country does not rest on the fact that ‘you will not vote for a libertarian’. As to the ‘Libertarians will never win’ argument, I’m sure that was bandied about in 1854 about Freemont. I’m pretty sure the GOP had a little more success (in part because of the incompetence of their opposition) the next cycle and have done pretty well since. As it stands, I do hope you have a good day and I do care

      • How quaint Jerry, another ‘either voter for the DumbA$$ KC or you’ll suffer’ argument.

        Two things: First, the very best thing in the world for this country is for Hilary to get nominated for president in 2016. Talk about a win/win. If Hilary loses, a pro 2A person in the WH. If she wins (I find it hard to believe our country would elect her but I never underestimate the lack of competency of the leadership of her opposition) Nothing will change for the 2nd Amendment for her term. The GOP won’t work with her and her own people will be running away from her so as not to be painted with the Hilary lackey brush. I hope Hilary gets the nomination.

        Second, If the GOP wants to win the governor’s race in VA, they need to run someone who is electable. If they run a religious right wing candidate who is focused on social policies, I suspect they’ll lose. If they had run someone who was more focused on the economy and less on these social issues, I suspect they’d win.

        Are you saying that the GOP doesn’t have a winning position in VA? That to be successful in VA at the state level, the GOP would have to compromise their principles? I don’t think you are right, I just think they have to campaign like they haven’t had a frontal lobotomy.

        • Hllary, like all presidents, nominate judges. Supreme court judges. They can “change the 2A” Of couse she can win, Obama did, probably with the help of your vote. Cucinelli was the sitting attorney general, elected in a landside 4 years ago. He was “electable”. Tell you what pal, you can think that a woman aborting her unborn child an hour before its due date is freedom all you want. I disagree. Cucinelli’s opposition to abortion is no more extreme than that scumbag McAuliffe’s opposition to any restrictions on it. He, like most leftists, gets a pass on abortion. Fine. Tell you what, you vote for whatever candidate or party you want, I will do the same. I don’t live in VA, so its really no skin off my ass.

        • Jerry,

          Where is the hostility coming from? Is it a little scary when someone doesn’t agree with you. I liked the fact you started off with a good point about the potential judicial nomination powers of Hilary, all the more reason for the GOP to get their heads out of their backsides when it comes time for nominating a candidate. Then it went down hill with a bunch of accusations. This comes down to strategy. Whether KC was successful last cycle is hardly the issue. The real question is, will he win this cycle. And even though McAuliffe and the Dems tried with all his might to give the GOP the election, the GOP lost because they selected a bad candidate for Governor. It wasn’t the Libertarians or Dem cheating or anything else, They used a convention to pick a candidate that was not electable for the Governor office in VA and the election proved that. If the GOP doesn’t recognize that, they will continue to struggle in the bigger elections.

        • Don’t really know where to start with all your blah, blah, blah, so how about this: You are not exempt from the consequences of liberals winning. Your 2A rights will be restricted just like mine. You stated Cucinelli was not electable, I point out that he is, and you wave it off. mcauliffe barely won my friend. Less than 50% of the vote. Not hostile, just stating reality. Way to go back to the 19th century to try and prove me wrong. Congrats, you got me you clever devil. Hold on a moment, I will go back further and see if I can dig another libertarian up. Don’t go away.

        • Finally, a post that doesn’t blame me and like minded voters for the election of Obama or assume my support of one hour pre birth abortions. Heck, you didn’t even call me pal this time, you must be turning on the charm. I can respond to this.

          I liked that your post centered around consequences and I would like to question the consequences of nominating Cuccinelli. You correctly stated my position was that he is unelectable, and he is.

          It was close at the end thanks to the bungling of the Dems. First, they put up someone who is probably too far to the left for VA with McAuliffe. The fact that they guy’s main credentials were his ties with Clinton and formerly leading the DNC isn’t really going to really gel with a more pro business VA electorate. There are some very left parts of this state, but generally speaking, VA is fairly moderate. Then, as the polls have McAuliffe pulling away, They bring in a bunch of carpetbaggers to dump money into the election so the said baggers can take credit. I’m sure this killed McAuliffe and almost lost him the election.

          But the GOP is the architect of its own demise here. They selected a candidate, without primary vetting, that is far to the right. He has verifiably, publicly used his position as attorney general to champion socially conservative causes. The sodomy laws get the most press but they weren’t his only fights. So, even though he had the advantage of running against a too left opponent who is plagued with deplorable out of state support, he still got beat. That it was so close isn’t because of his almost elect-ability. It speaks to how terrible McAuliife is. I read a line in the media the other day that suggested we Virginians were going to the polls to elect the person we hate the least and that sums it up about right.

          Also, my 19th century analogy wasn’t a libertarian reference. If you check out Fremont (I not only misspelled his name in my previous post but also identified the year as 1854, it was 1856) in Wikipedia, you’ll see that while chronologically distant, there is a little germane irony there.

          There are consequences for the GOP going to a convention and coming out with a candidate that is focused on making sure VA comports with his version of God’s law. As I said in my original post, if the GOP doesn’t accept that they are responsible for this loss, then they will continue to lose.

      • >> Yeah, not happening.

        Then you lose, again and again and again. Which is fine, if you want to make a symbolic no-compromise stand for your values. But then don’t whine about the outcome.

  43. Coming into work this morning I was listienting to a story on the exit polling and the demographics of this election. It turns out we are all riding are own particular hobby horses and missing the real story. McAuliffe won the election in Northern Virginia and pretty much lost the rest of the state. That’s why the Republicans took 65 seats out 100 in the House of Delgates. Cuccinelli’s albatross of social issues was balanced off by McAuliffe’s albatross of gun control and the healthcare law. The issue that decided the election was not social issues or corruption but federal worker anger over the government shutdown. Ironicly Cuccinelli pleaded with Ted Cruz not to do it for this very reason. He, like Rand Paul, was smart enough to know that the shutdown battle was loser and would cost Republicans big time. The Republicans are lucky that O-care crashed and burned on takeoff to balance that out. I like Ted Cruz but he made a rookie mistake that cost the party a governorship. He needs to sit on the bench for a while and learn how to figure out how to pick winning issues.

    • Federal workers got (and always get) a paid vacation during the shutdown. It played no part in this election. You heard the the preferred media narrative, and you fell for it. Do you think the Government workers in N. VA were just itching to vote R right up until the shutdown? Just another media story trying to damage the brand of the Tea Party and Ted Cruz. Kooch lost because he had NO help from the establishment. End of story.

      • Just because they got paid doesn’t mean they forgot about it Chuck in Illinois.
        from TDI in Arlington Virginia.

        We live in an asymetric world. I know about Illinois politics than you know about Virginia politics because my childhood home was at 1412 W Jarvis, Chicago, Illinois 60626. I suspect you haven’t lived in Virginia.

        • So what that you lived in Chicago. Is that alone supposed to make you an informed expert and rational in arguing your case?

        • No, because in the process of growing up in Chicago I used to hang with John and Tony Podesta, and the late congressman Steve Schiff (R-NM) Steve and I broke right while John and Tony broke left. Hate to name drop but…

      • Not everyone in NOVA is a federal worker. A lot of NOVA are contractors (myself included). Most of these agencies hire contractors and the area is thick with Lockheed, Booze Allen Hamilton, Accenture, etc. companies big and small.

        I was forced to eat my vacation time and floating holidays during the shutdown. I’m not getting that time back.

    • Tdiinva, I generally disagree with you, but this is one of the smartest comments here from an analysis perspective.

    • You have a smart mouth do you not TT? At least on the internet. McAuliffe’s lead was nearly blown not because of “carpetbagger” money, but because of the Obamacare rollout debacle. That, more than anything else, is what nearly cost Mcauliffe his lead. Cucenelli opposes abortion, McAuliffe supports it in all forms, and without any restrictions. No less extreme. I suppose I really have no reason to be upset, it does not affect me one way or another. I don’t live in VA. Why should I even care?

    • What kind of cognitive dissonance is necessary for a person to think that Ted Cruz, who couldn’t even stop the Obamacare disaster, somehow has the power to shut down the whole bloody government?

  44. Shannon Watts was already gloating about this on twitter last night. She says that it’s a clear victory for gun control. However, I think Bloomberg and the disastrous Obamacare rollout are why KC almost closed a 15 point gap in just one week.

    The VA house has a GOP supermajority, and with any luck TMac will before long be joining all the Illinois governors in disgrace for selling visas with that other sleazebag Tony Rodham. Maybe this will hurt Hillary’s presidential campaign a bit too. The more these slimy cronies and creepy brothers of hers are in the news, the worse for her. I can dream anyway. What a dirty smelly pile of baggage the Clintons have.

  45. I don’t buy this blame the Libertarian voter line. The Republicans nominated just about the most polarizing figure in Virginia politics. They should have darn well known they were gonna lose women voters- and they did, he got only 42% of the female vote. And women, I should point out, are 51% of the electorate here.

    A more appealing candidate could have pulled in enough votes to win against the profoundly unappealing McAuliffe. Heck, my Democratic, liberal wife voted Libertarian rather than endorse McAuliffe. It’s the first time she’s EVER not backed the Democrat. The Libertarian voters were too evenly split to sway the result from the polls I’ve seen.

    Regardless, this is not a rousing endorsement of McAuliffe by the electorate, and he will not get massive restrictions on the 2nd A. passed. The legislature is quite safely divided between parties.

    • I just checked the CNN exit polling, and they say the majority of Sarvis voters said they’d have voted for McAuliffe in a two-party race. Sorry, but without the Libertarian, Cuccinelli would have just lost by a greater margin.

  47. We all better hope this Election is not a foretaste of what will happen in November 2014. Not just for our Second Amendment Rights but a whole host of issues. If the Democrats win in Congress and States because The GOP, Libertarians and Tea Party split the Conservative votes, the Progressive Statist Socialist Democrats will impose worse than ObamaCare on the American People and irreparably damage the U.S. Economy.
    Right now it is all about winning elections for the purpose of preserving The Republic…not birthing the Socialist, third world, wealth redistributed visions of Barak Obama. Time enough for the advancement of Third Parties when we have overthrown the Democratic Jacka$$ who wants to sell the Country bit by bit to whoever will lend it money while taking your money in Taxes to pay-off those who vote for it. Reality is a b*tch, but we had better get real familiar with her in the next twelve months.

  49. The GOP can’t keep pushing far-right candidates; if I were in Virginia I would not have voted for him; I am as pro-choice as I am pro2A.

  50. You know when this is all said and done, you know who both sides of this argument should have contempt for? Here’s a hint:

    Population of VA (projected), according to census.gov: 8,185,867
    Persons under 18, percent: 22.7%
    8,185,867 * .773 = 6,327,675
    Votes cast: 1,065,185 (D) + 1,010,335 (R) + 145,558 (L) = 2,221,078
    6,327,675 – 2,221,078 = 4,106,597 or 64.9% of voting age adults did not bother to cast a ballot

    That’s who you should have contempt for.

  51. As a Virginian I will endure the reign of the Obama/Clinton Clone in hopes that the liberal socialist agenda is not moved appreciably forward……even though I have my doubts.

Comments are closed.