Repeater
Regular Member
I'm bumping this for the obligatory ad. Post will follow.
Northern Virginia also demonstrates the dangers for the GOP if the party does not respond to a rapidly changing state electorate. While the percentages for the Democratic candidates were about the same in Fairfax County, doing as well translated into nearly 13,000 more votes for the Democrats in 2013. The GOP, in contrast, only ended up with 6,600 more Fairfax votes than the party received eight years earlier.
Republican candidates for statewide office need to focus on where the voters are, geographically as well as demographically and culturally.
Given voting trends that are at best problematic going forward, Republicans would be wise to seek more moderate statewide candidates.
I don't really like this:
So, their advice is what, nominating pro-gun control "moderate" RINO's in order to [strike]appeal[/strike] capitulate to the urban cancer centers?
"Despite his very thin governing credentials, McAuliffe effectively painted his opponent as an extremist who cared more about closing abortion clinics than getting Virginians back to work." - Dat article.
Appreciate your thoughts, dude, but I see no relevance in what Communist Vietnam or Somalia do - hardly relevant to Virginia politics/elections or the results thereof.--snipped--
The question of "why" about what? The OP has shared an image of party breakdown by area and remarked how distasteful is was - generated by those opposed to us. Think he was more considering how such information is portrayed rather than analyzing the results.Now the question is why? Better organization getting out the vote?
SNIP Now the question is why?
The question of "why" about what? The OP has shared an image of party breakdown by area and remarked how distasteful is was - generated by those opposed to us. Think he was more considering how such information is portrayed rather than analyzing the results.
This is not a thread on why the election went the way it did - plenty of existing threads for that.
Perhaps you should offer your services on a national and multi-state level - get wealthy, become famous while producing results that could have profound results for our side. Then there would be no need to ask why.Grape .. I've run political campaigns .... and got out a larger vote for my side than the other side while the reg. voters of the other side outnumbered my side 2-1.... so votes cast for one side or another is only the end result ... why the result occurs is not so straightforward.
--snipped--l
The question of "why" about what? The OP has shared an image of party breakdown by area and remarked how distasteful is was - generated by those opposed to us. Think he was more considering how such information is portrayed rather than analyzing the results.
This is not a thread on why the election went the way it did - plenty of existing threads for that.
Bedrock vs. Cosmopolitan
There is a significant difference in the way people who live in highly urbanized areas as opposed to rural and small town communities (not suburban areas) view guns, gun ownership and self-protection. Prof. William Tonso, a sociologist at the University of Evansville, has identified this difference broadly as related to two distinctly different cultures: one individual, bedrock and traditional American, the other collective, cosmopolitan and more European in character.
Perhaps this is why Congressional - or even state - votes on gun legislation are clearly divided along geographic rather than party lines or broad political philosophy. If Democrats more frequently appear to be the party supporting gun laws in Congress and in many states, that is because they are more frequently the party of urbanized areas. But when you look at those Democrats who voted against the ban, you will find that they come from less urbanized areas, from traditionalist Democratic strongholds in the South and West.
A closer look at Republican votes reveals that most GOP votes for new gun laws tend to come from urban and suburban areas. Take a look at the roll call vote for the Feinstein-Schumer "assault weapon" and "large capacity magazine" ban. Republicans like Henry Hyde of Illinois and Jack Quinn of New York, as just two examples of Republicans who voted for the ban, are urban-suburban Republicans. They will tell you that their constituent polls showed support for the ban, or that local law enforcement officials urged them to vote for it. But neither reason would have applied in a different geographic area. The police chiefs and sheriffs in more rural, bedrock areas, who actually outnumber their colleagues in the urban, cosmopolitan areas, did not support the ban, and did not get lawmakers who otherwise would have voted against it to switch.
That brings us to the influence of the law-enforcement community on the issue, and a major root cause for the anti-gun vote. But first, remember that the National Association of Chiefs of Police (NACOP) polls, which survey all command level police across the country, differ from the oft repeated claim that law-enforcement endorsed the ban. The police organizations which supported Feinstein-Schumer are dominated by urban-suburban types who, while fewer in number, are also more easily linked to the big city media and more susceptible to political pressure.
Well, the prescription from the political science professor, Stephen J. Farnsworth, is that the GOP needs to "moderate" its image, message, or whatever - and that often is code for "reasonable" or "common-sense" gun control, like "universal" background checks.
Years ago, I remember another professor, William Tonso, who wrote about the civil war between the Cosmopolitans and the Bedrock Americans. One of his papers can be found here:
Social Science and Sagecraft in the Debate Over Gun Control
Some time later, Joseph P. Tartaro wrote about that theme in a commentary:
Under this theory, as Virginia becomes more overwhelmed by urbanized Progressive-minded Cosmopolitans, the worse it will become for the rest of us.
With that in mind, Thomas Jefferson has something to say on the subject of cities and the urban mind set.
http://www.planetizen.com/node/18841
With that in mind, Thomas Jefferson has something to say on the subject of cities and the urban mind set.
http://www.planetizen.com/node/18841
This new graphic is disgusting looking. It looks like our beloved Virginia with stage 4 cancer:
God help us.