Virginia GOP: If It Wasn't For That Dumb 'Participatory Democracy' We Could Totes Win Tuesday's Election

When do you know you have run a bad political campaign? How about when the party chairman of your state wishes aloud that the vast majority of voters stay home on Election Day so you will have a better chance of winning? That is what happened to roguish Victorian-era knave Ken “Cooch” Cuccinelli this weekend as his gubernatorial run in our beloved home state of Virginia continued to go down faster than a generous lover practicing an act the Cooch would like to outlaw.

Gotta give it to Virginia GOP Chairman Pat Mullins for his spin skills, though. Kent Brockman would have come out and said “Democracy simply doesn’t work.” Pat Mullins has his own more subtle way of hoping voters won’t participate in the political process to ensure his terrible candidate gets elected.

If turnout is in the 30s, the low 30s, we’re gonna win. If it gets higher up in Fairfax [in Democratic-leaning Northern Virginia], say like 40, it’s likely we won’t. I don’t think it’s going to hit 40 anywhere. I’m looking at 32.

Got that, Virginia voters? The fewer of you vote, the better chance the man who has been trailing by double digits in the polls for most of the campaign will get elected to represent the interests of a minority of you. What’s this swelling in our chest? Couldn’t be pride, could it?

Over at Dead Breitbart’s Orphanarium for Shitwitted Glory Hole Enthusiasts, you can read this nifty piece by Mike Flynn, last seen in these pages whining about furloughed federal workers getting comped for meals like a bunch of welfare queens. Flynn also tries to sound a hopeful note for despondent Republicans with the headline “Cuccinelli Has Enthusiasm Edge” because “in low turnout elections like that, voter enthusiasm is a critical factor.”

As it happens, your Wonkette conducted its own poll of Virginia voters this weekend. The poll had a small sample size, as it consisted solely of our parents, and the only question we asked was “How sick are you guys of hearing about this campaign?” Dad groaned and turned the conversation to whether the problematic rollout of the Obamacare exchange website will hurt Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe (our take: no). Mom heaved a heavy sigh and complained that this is the second straight gubernatorial election in which she has been voting more against one candidate than for the other one. But, she concluded, since the alternative is a Cooch win and the rolling back of abortion rights to the era of back alleys and coathangers, she will be at her polling place bright and semi-early on Tuesday. And Mom is not someone who ever talks about her politics very much.

This is why we think anyone looking at McAuliffe’s low enthusiasm numbers is missing the point. Sure, people are not enthusiastic about voting for him. But we suspect more than a few are VERY VERY enthusiastic about sending Ken Cuccinelli back to whatever primordial fundamentalist fever soup he oozed out of a few years back. Quinnipiac might not have asked how badly your average Virginian is embarrassed by the Cooch, but maybe it should have.

[ Politico / Breitbart ]