by Kerry Dougherty
So, boys and girls, what did we learn Tuesday night?
I’ll go first.
First, we learned never to underestimate the Democrats’ devotion to abortion. To them, it’s a sacrament. Something not to be touched. Every woman, they believe, has the right (I’d say God-given, but it seems blasphemous) to abort her baby right up until birth.
They want unfettered access to abortions more than they want good schools, a booming economy, or world peace.
Shoot, they nearly elected a woman who engaged in slutty online sex acts with her lawyer husband while they begged for tips from an audience of masturbating voyeurs over abortion. This mother of two convinced more than 16,000 Virginia Democrats that spreading her legs and who knows what else for an online camera was simply bodily autonomy. An extension of a woman’s right to choose.
Did those voters think this sex worker had the judgment and character to serve in the same chamber than once housed Patrick Henry? Yeah, baby. She supports abortion!
Moving on, we also learned that there is a downside to holding off-year statehouse elections when almost no other states have contests.
It means there are tractor-trailer loads of loot that can be dumped from out-of-state special interests into Virginia campaigns undiluted by needs in other places.
It also means that Virginia’s elections take on an exaggerated national importance.
Virginia is not a swing state. It’s a blueish purple state that elected a likeable businessman as governor, along with his running mates, during a time when parents were harboring raw resentment toward public schools that closed during covid and then hid sexual assaults once they opened. It was a type of harmonic convergence, unlikely to be repeated any time soon.
To deduce that the 2024 election cycle will result in massive losses for the GOP around the country because of Virginia’s bad night in 2023 is wishful thinking by the left. Especially if Joe Biden continues to set the world on fire with his missteps. Or if his literal missteps result in his tumbling down more stairs.
We won’t have final campaign donation figures until December but if anecdotal reports are correct, the public will be stunned by the sums of money the Democrats dumped into Virginia in the final weeks of October.
Virginia’s Republicans had the added disadvantage that their fellow party members looked like clowns in Congress, which fed the perception that the GOP can’t govern. They also had to cope with redistricting, which was decidedly unfriendly to conservative candidates.
On top of it all, the GOP was miserable on messaging, especially on abortion. Promoting a reasonable 15-week ban would undoubtedly be palatable to all but the most rabid abortion enthusiasts. The way to convey this message is to make it clear that the real extremists in this abortion debate are the ghouls who support grisly late-term abortions.
Instead, Republicans let the Dems portray them as out of step with Virginians.
Lose the messaging, lose the election.
Yep, it was a bad night for Virginia’s Republicans.
They need to brush it off, figure out what they did wrong and fix it.
Oh, and the chair of the RNC needs to be fired.
