Losing candidate Ed Gillespie Virginia held it's election for Governor yesterday and once again, as has been the case for a number of election cycles, the Republican candidate lost. Needing every possible Conservative vote to counter the urban voters of the Washington suburbs, Ed Gillespie ran a campaign which I would call "milquetoast", very bland and uninspiring and toeing the line of the national Republican establishment. It's not what the needed voters wanted and, as a result, he didn't get a big enough suburban and rural vote to counter the northern sector.
It didn't have to be that way. Steve Bannon offered him air time through the Breitbart news network and even a joint campaign appearance on his behalf. We've seen how that has turned out in red states and it would likely have been a real boost in Virginia, a purple state but trending blue. So what happened? The Gillespie campaign turned him down, opting to go with advice from his establishment handlers. Bannon endorsed him anyway (certainly the lesser of two evils at the least), but without his communications weapons and those who support his positions, all was lost.
Now Ed Gillespie is a good and decent man, but his political views were created by his long association with the establishment. And he ran previously in Virginia for Senator and lost that election for the same reason. But I guess it was too much to expect a former Republican National Committee chairman to alter his views enough to win. And sometimes I even think that Republicans don't want to win, they just want a cushy job in Washington and that is the likely future for Gillespie.
If there's any consolation, at least Andy Northam, the Governor-Elect, will certainly be a better man in Virginia's chief executive chair than Terry McAuliffe, the Clinton money bundler and outgoing governor. He is a Democrat, however, and he is sure to endorse everything that the national organization puts before him, and from my perspective that's not good for Virginia. Personally, as a native son of the Commonwealth, I will pray for her future. She'll need all the prayers she can get.
It didn't have to be that way. Steve Bannon offered him air time through the Breitbart news network and even a joint campaign appearance on his behalf. We've seen how that has turned out in red states and it would likely have been a real boost in Virginia, a purple state but trending blue. So what happened? The Gillespie campaign turned him down, opting to go with advice from his establishment handlers. Bannon endorsed him anyway (certainly the lesser of two evils at the least), but without his communications weapons and those who support his positions, all was lost.
Now Ed Gillespie is a good and decent man, but his political views were created by his long association with the establishment. And he ran previously in Virginia for Senator and lost that election for the same reason. But I guess it was too much to expect a former Republican National Committee chairman to alter his views enough to win. And sometimes I even think that Republicans don't want to win, they just want a cushy job in Washington and that is the likely future for Gillespie.
If there's any consolation, at least Andy Northam, the Governor-Elect, will certainly be a better man in Virginia's chief executive chair than Terry McAuliffe, the Clinton money bundler and outgoing governor. He is a Democrat, however, and he is sure to endorse everything that the national organization puts before him, and from my perspective that's not good for Virginia. Personally, as a native son of the Commonwealth, I will pray for her future. She'll need all the prayers she can get.
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