Ken Cuccinnelli praises E.W. Jackson, the extremist minister nominated last weekend by VA GOP for lt. gov.
Your eyes should
already be rolling:
A minister who compared gays to pedophiles and Planned Parenthood to the Klu Klux Klan is not the No. 2 candidate Republican Party reformers had in mind for the marquee race of 2013.
And who might those reformers be?
“We learned a lot of lessons in 2012 that we’re trying to point out to people, but not all the people are going to listen,” said Ari Fleischer, a former White House press secretary who helped lead the national party’s sweeping examination of the 2012 election and produce a 97-page report of recommendations.
Bush's press secretary, a reformer? Seriously? I'm not defending the tea party lunatics, but if the GOP's idea is reform is to listen to the guys who made opposition to marriage equality the centerpiece of their 2004 reelection campaign and presided over the worst presidency ever, then they've got some serious problems.
A more informal but similar soul-searching is taking place in Virginia, where the Republican establishment is worried the party will be better known for requiring women seeking abortions to get ultrasounds than for passing a sweeping transportation funding deal. A small group of Republican donors, business leaders, and former elected officials has met in Richmond twice since April about the tea-party’s movement’s impact on the GOP. According to a participant in both meetings, the group is concerned that Cuccinelli is too conservative to win a general election in state that voted twice for President Obama—and that was before Jackson joined the ticket.
If these guys were willing to say that they won't vote for their ticket, I'd at least have a little sympathy for them. But it's obvious why Republicans keep on nominating lunatics: It's because lunatics do a pretty damn good job of representing the GOP base. And the the fact that the establishment still wants the lunatics to win shows that they pretty much the same page as their base when it comes to substance. The main thing that separates the two groups is that the establishment is smart enough to know that most people don't see the world the same way they do.