It’s time for the Cuccinelli shuffle! Virginia’s AG shakes up his campaign team in last gasp effort

You can stir the kettle and add some more seasoning, but it doesn’t mean you’ll make a great stew! And so it is with Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s campaign for governor. The bombast that catapulted him onto the national stage as a half-baked libertarian seemed to have pushed his campaign for governor into an untenable corner that many Virginian’s appear disinclined to vote for.

In a too little, too late response to his drooping campaign, Cuccinelli elected to “shake up” his campaign’s staff a day before he also chose to donate $18,000 to a charity in an effort to wash away the memory and the corruptive scent left behind by his interactions with one wealthy campaign donor in particular.

As the Virginian-Pilot pointed out, many of these “distractions” have been of Cuccinelli’s own design. It was his choice to stay in office as attorney general instead of distancing himself from his pal Bob McDonnell and the numerous allegations of unethical, or even unlawful, behavior that have curled up around him. If not guilty in the first degree, Cuccinelli has become guilty by association in the minds of many Virginians.

It’s heartening to see that someone as clearly uninterested in governing responsibly as Ken Cuccinelli has been shrugged aside (at least for now) by the majority of Virginian’s who’ve been polled.

Things could of course change from now until November. The Republican Party has been good at stoking up the right amount of fear in the electorate to cajole a vote for the GOP candidate who seems like the key to some form of social or economic safety. McAuliffe will have to continue to withstand attacks for the horrific crime of being a businessman and making mistakes along the way. How dare he?

For Cuccinelli’s part, he’ll continue to pat himself on the back for being a long-lived public servant who knows the ropes of Virginia’s government (and consequently, how to subtly screw over the people of Virginia). In so doing, I hope that Virginians remember the man that gave back an $18,000 “gift” only after his chances at winning the governor’s seat dipped. Someone with integrity wouldn’t have taken the “gift” in the first place.