The GOP Establishment Screws Another Conservative - With Some Unexpected Help

The elections in New Jersey and Virginia are over.

In New Jersey, Chris Christie, who was facing a Democrat non-entity galloped to a 60.5 re-election win. The only counties the Democrats carried were Essex, where Newark is located and next door Hudson county, both with large black constituencies. It was not unexpected.

Christie, who undoubtedly has presidential fever is obviously positioning himself as 2016's alternative to the Tea Party, something dear to the GOP establishment's heart and soul. Christie made a huge point about how his re-election should be a lesson to Republicans. “I know that if we can do this in Trenton, N.J., then maybe the folks in Washington, D.C., should tune in their TVs right now and see how it’s done.”

He made a point of lecturing Republicans about how to win elections, saying, “We don’t just show up in the places where we’re comfortable, we show up in the places we’re uncomfortable. You don’t just show up 6 months before an election.”

This is all very well coming from an incumbent in a Blue state with some of the worst gun laws in the country, where taxes are high, the economy still remains poor and public employee unions still hold sway in spite of the governor's well publicized YouTube outings. The Democrats and their media allies devoted zero resources to defaming, demonizing and defeating him, and the worst Chris Christie had to contend with last night was the usual voter fraud in Newark.If Christie does get the GOP nomination in 2016, things will be very different.

In Virginia, Ken Cuccinelli came within a hair of defeating former DNC head Terry McAuliffe.

Cuccinelli, an unabashed conservative Republican was totally abandoned by the RNC. He was outspent 10 to 1 by McAuliffe, who also received substantial money and shock troops from the unions, pro-Amnesty groups like La Raza and radical environmental groups who like his radical, job killing positions on coal, carbon taxes and global warming.

He also got get out the vote appearances from Vice President Joe Biden, his old boss Hillary Clinton and President Obama among others, with Obama concentrating on ginning up the black vote for McAuliffe.

With all that, McAuliffe was only able to get 48% of the vote, while Cuccinelli got 45.5%, a spread of 2.5 points.

What beat Cuccinelli was the Obama funded 'Libertarian' candidacy of Robert Sarvis, who a number of people whom consider themselves conservatives and who normally vote Republican pulled the lever for and who ended up with 6.6% of the vote. If even one third of the Sarvis vote had gone to Cuccinelli, he would have won. I'm sure Obama considers it money well spent.

Cuccinelli was no RINO, but a conservative and a decent public servant. While he had a few missteps, next to Terry McAuliffe's record they pale into insignificance. A lot of the people who voted for Sarvis are undoubtedly justifying what they did as a 'protest vote', even though both Senator Rand Paul and his father canvassed the state for Cuccinelli warning people that Sarvis was no Libertarian and that they were being played.

So they made their protest and put Terry McAuliffe in office. Elections have consequences. I have a feeling those conservatives who voted for Sarvis are going to be feeling the effects of that protest vote in ways that are going to be painful and that they aren't going to appreciate. What Terry McAuliffe is going to do to Virginia is what Barack Obama has done to the United States. Meanwhile the GOP establishment is high fiving themselves,preparing to ignore the Republican base again and lining up behind Chris Christie as 'the Tea Party alternative, the guy we can win with in 2016.'

And the usual suspects are already out there on TV, radio and on the 'net trumpeting this as a 'message to the Tea Party'

To those of you who voted for Robert Sarvis, you're entitled. But divide and conquer is a old but effective strategy, and this time I think you fell for it. We could have won this one. We should have.