Opinion: Brain Dead Politics In Virginia
Yesterday, I wrote about the brain dead approach of the current Republican Party: sign a bunch of out-of-the-mainstream pledges on taxes, women's health care and all sorts of other policies; run to the right of those pledges; and try to suppress the votes of those who disagree with you.
One of the poster boys of this brain dead approach to politics is Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. He aspires to be the next governor of Virginia after spending four years trying to deny women's health care rights, blocking Obamacare and forcing his ideology and personal beliefs on the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Cuccinelli, who expressed his support for the birther movement by claiming that Obama being born secretly in Kenya "was not out of the question." He is a hero of the Tea Party because he sued the Obama Administration over the Affordable Care Act.
His kookiness extends to Social Security numbers as well. He told a group that he and his wife were seriously considering not getting a Social Security number for their seventh child "because it is being used to track you."
He also went to the nutty extreme of altering the Virginia state seal because he felt it was immodest.
As Attorney General, Cuccinelli tried to suppress climate change research at the University of Virginia.
Not surprisingly, Cuccinelli is also a homophobe and tried to get colleges to drop policies banning discrimination based on sexual orientation.
He pushed for the defunding of Planned Parenthood and supported a plan that would force women to have a state mandated ultrasound by vaginal probe before they had an abortion.
Ken Cuccinelli is Exhibit A in the case of defining all the things that are out of touch about today's Republican Party.
Yesterday, Cuccinelli went on a local outlet of the right-wing alternate reality entertainment complex and agreed with the host that there was something suspicious about Obama's victory because Obama did not win any states with voter ID laws.
The host, Cheri Jacobus, said: "we’re hearing so many stories (about voter fraud)" and pointed to states "where photo ID is required. Obama lost every one of those states. He can’t win a state where photo ID is required. So clearly there’s something going on out there..."
No one has presented any evidence of in-person voter fraud. It is literally a belief that is out of touch with reality.
But Cuccinelli's agreed with the host. He told her "I’m with you completely."
Ken Cuccinelli is already being anointed as the 2013 Republican nominee for governor in Virginia. His only opponent was forced out of the race.
If you were expecting anything different from the GOP after November, look at Virginia.
Republicans in the state that went blue in the Presidential and Senate races, a state Obama won twice and has two Democratic Senators, thinks Ken Cuccinelli is the direction to go.
About Bill Buck
Bill Buck is a Democratic strategist, President of the Buck Communications Group, a media relations and new media strategies consulting business based in Washington, DC, and Managing Director of the online ad firm Influence DSP. He has over twenty years of international and national communications experience. The views and opinions expressed in this post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of CBS Local.
