From the Washington Times:
Losing the governorship in the reliably red state of Virginia to Democrat Tim Kaine doesn’t help sagging Republican morale. It does hold a lesson: Don’t take your base for granted.
There are other factors at work in a national election, of course, but there does seem to be a certain pattern at work in Virginia that may be echoed in the next presidential election.
Virginia, a southern state, is less strongly Republican than states like South Carolina and Texas, but has an Assembly that is leans 24-16 Republican and a 60-40 House. However, like their counterparts in Congress, the Virginia Republicans have taxed and spent in a manner indistinguishable from Democrats, which has demoralized their conservative base and left them unenthusiastic about voting for the pragmatic and unprincipled politicians of their party. Now, Virginia has a Democratic governor.
This is why I expect Republicans to lose the next presidential election in a similar manner. Bush’s re-election was feeble in comparison with the Nixon and Reagan landslides; Democrats are fairly inoculated against an unlikely perception of eventual success in the Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism by their vote for the initial invasion and the economic future does not look promising.
Unfortunately, Ms Rodham is the most likely benefit of these developments as the Democrats have no other serious national figures. It is possible that one might yet appear, but when a party is willing to consider former comics to headline its Senatorial campaigns, the roster would appear to be on the thin side.