Mo’ Money and a Republican governor in Virginia?

The blame-game began in earnest shortly following Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe’s gubernatorial victory over lame-duck Virginia Attorney General, Ken Cuccinelli, on November 5^th. Once the election results became official, Tea Party and conservative groups quickly pointed the finger at the Republican Party ‘establishment’ as the primary reason for McAuliffe’s win over Cuccinelli.

According to these groups, Terry McAuliffe could have been beaten if the “party’s establishment” hadn’t reduced its financial support during the remaining weeks of the gubernatorial contest. In the words of Cuccinelli strategist Chris La Civita, “There are a lot of questions people are going to be asking and that is, was leaving Cuccinelli alone in the first week of October, a smart move.”

Instead of focusing on why the ‘GOP establishment’ reduced its funding for Cuccinelli in the first place, angry conservative and Tea Party groups have set their sights on the reduction of financial contributions by a group of traditional Republican financial contributors dubbed the ‘party establishment’. In other words, these groups have chosen to ignore the possibility that Ken Cuccinelli was an extremist candidate for governor in a state that largely frowns upon political extremes on either end of the political spectrum.

The lesson these groups should draw from the November 5^th General Election in Virginia is that the Ken Cuccinelli’s of the political world are short-term fads, at best, that quickly fall out of favor once the American public realize just how harmful their extreme policies are.

The focus on ‘establishment Republicans’ by conservative and Tea Party groups will only fuel the flames of internal Republican Party turmoil that may damage the GOP ‘brand’ even more and/or divide the party even further into two camps, establishment and non-establishment (assuming there is an ‘establishment’ wing of the Republican Party). Either of these outcomes would be fine by me.