Off Year Elections: Lessons Learned?

Off Year Elections: Lessons Learned?

Tuesday's main events were the off-year elections in New Jersey and Virginia, and political prognosticators always look for trends that may be useful for the coming national elections. Let's just say the lessons Tuesday are mixed.

Beginning in New Jersey, Republican Gov. Chris Christie won a resounding re-election bid with more than 60% of the vote in a blue state. Christie is no "Tea Party" conservative, but he has governed on the conservative side, winning pension reform for public employees, tenure reform for teachers that makes it easier to fire bad ones, and vetoing an ill-advised tax increase on the wealthy. On the other hand, he banned gender-disorientation therapy, has generally been ornery toward conservative national Republicans and runs a state still mired at the bottom economically. Still, Christie worked well across the aisle and made significant outreach to minorities who supplied his margin of victory -- that's what hugging Barack Obama can do. He is well positioned to make a run at the GOP presidential nomination in 2016, and it's worth remembering that Ronald Reagan was the last true conservative to win that nomination.

Perhaps the more interesting lessons, however, come from Virginia's governor's race, where Clintonista carpetbagger Terry McAuliffe edged conservative Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. It was the latter who spearheaded the major lawsuit against ObamaCare, so Democrats will crow about their Virginia victory, but Cuccinelli was defeated by factors well beyond McAuliffe's campaign, and if the GOP doesn't learn from its mistakes, there will be more disappointments to follow in 2014.

Cuccinelli entered the race with an uphill battle created by a largely fabricated scandal involving former Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell. But more than any other factor, his narrow defeat was due to the completely avoidable liability created by the ill-conceived box-canyon strategy to defund ObamaCare, which enabled Democrats to hang the partial government shutdown around GOP necks. This was particularly true in northern Virginia, where some 30% of the state's voters reside, including a heavy portion of government employees or contractors.

Indeed, Democrats certainly understand the principle of "divided THEY fall." Too many Republicans, particularly in our conservative ranks, have yet to figure out that "divided WE fall."

Of course there were other factors.

The Republican National Committee virtually gave up on Cuccinelli early on, giving him just $3 million. McAuliffe raised almost $15 million more than Cuccinelli, thanks to help from his old boss, Bill Clinton.

In the end, however, McAuliffe victory margin was 2%, when he had led in the polls by double digits for months. Thanks to the calamitous rollout of ObamaCare, Cuccinelli nearly pulled off the upset -- and undoubtedly would have but for the government shutdown baggage. Of course, it could also be argued that the third party Libertarian candidate, Robert Sarvis, who received almost 7% of the vote, handed the victory to McAuliffe.

And a final note on the subject of Democrats dividing and conquering their adversaries, it turns out that Sarvis had the benefit of an Obama bankrolling bundler