I assume that everyone is checked out on the basic story? Vice President Joe Biden Opened His Mouth at a majority-African American audience in Virginia and told that audience that if Romney got elected they were all going to end up in chains (he also told them that they were in North Carolina, but that kind of reality-based ambiguity is more or less baked into | Read More »
Will this be the 2012 election map? If the Obama administration keeps up their War on Coal (literally: they consider coal more dangerous than terrorism), quite possibly. And it may be at least partially because of coal.
Because statewide elections matter. Executive summary: the new legislation now requires people filling out provisional ballots from lack of acceptable ID at the polling station “to subsequently submit identification to the electoral board if they want their vote to be counted.” The list of acceptable forms of ID was also expanded to include things like current utility bills and valid student IDs, which will no | Read More »
Shad planking. To summarize the video: every year this event goes on in Virginia where people get together at the Wakefield Ruritan Club and eat shad that’s been smoked on wooden planks (thus, ‘shad planking’). This is one of those big-time political social events for Virginia, and usually it’s pretty bipartisan because, you know, shad on wooden planks. Anyway: according to the video, the organizers | Read More »
OK, let me try to explain just what is going on in this court order involving the VA GOP primary ballot. For those who came in late: back in December, Virginia’s primary registration system ended up producing a result where only two Republican candidates (Mitt Romney and Ron Paul) qualified for the ballot. This resulted in some frankly unkind things said about virtually everyone involved | Read More »
Interesting; and a pretty strong reversal from Saturday’s statement. “I obviously feel very strongly that Virginia needs to change its ballot access requirements for our statewide elections,” Cuccinelli said in a statement. “However, after working through different scenarios with Republican and Democratic leaders to attempt to make changes in time for the 2012 presidential election, my concern grows that we cannot find a way to | Read More »
[FURTHER UPDATE] Drudge is not reporting that Perry/Gringrich are on the ballot; but Bachmann, Gingrich, Huntsman, and Santorum have joined Perry’s lawsuit. The Attorney General of Virginia “plans to file emergency legislation to address the inability of most Republican presidential candidates to get their names on the ballot;” as everyone reading this already knows, the recent Virginia primary ratification process ended up with only Mitt | Read More »
This just keeps getting better and better for the Virginia GOP, doesn’t it? Via Ballot Access News, first we get the Attorney General for Virginia pointing out that the requirements for ballot access are far too restrictive: I would throw out for consideration that we should lower our requirements to 100 legitimate signatures per congressional district. Let’s face it, absent a serious write-in challenge from | Read More »
Richard Winger over at Ballot Access News has an EXTREMELY interesting post (link via here) on the mess that the Virginia Republican party has found itself in over… access to the ballot in Virginia. For those coming in late, background here and here: the very short version is that the VA GOP only certified Mitt Romney and Ron Paul for its primary ballot. Rick Perry | Read More »
For those coming in late, let me summarize*: both Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry have been excluded from the Virginia Republican primary by the Virginia GOP. This has placed the VA GOP in an awkward situation, given that: they have excluded the current national and Virginian front-runner from their own ballot; have currently no write-in option on the ballot; do have an open primary that | Read More »
Or possibly “mess,” depending: Rick Perry’s definitely not certified, but is going to contest the results. Newt Gingrich may be certified; there’s this report (via @allahpundit), but I’ve seen no confirmation elsewhere and the VA GOP site is currently melting down. [UPDATE: that report has now been walked back.] Presumably Ron Paul will be next, as he has not actually gotten 15K signatures. [UPDATE: turns | Read More »
The Washington Post sums it up: at least six seats lost by the Democrats (including their House Minority Leader) in the House of Delegates and either one (Bill Stanley over Roscoe Reynolds) or two (Bryce Reeves leads Edd Houck by 86 votes) in the state Senate. If it’s one, the Democrats retain control of the state Senate; if it’s two, then the Senate is tied | Read More »
In a socially-acceptable way, of course: ie, via another hike in the tax on tobacco. The “Maryland Citizens’ Health Initiative” – a name whose hint of subtle menace should make small-government types involuntarily shiver – looking to raise it by a buck a pack, because… well, pretty much because they want people to quit smoking, and taxing it through the ceiling is supposed to accomplish | Read More »
That’s one potential conclusion that you can draw from today’s and yesterday’s Quinnipiac polls looking at Virginia political conditions. Admittedly, they’re just one firm’s polls; also admittedly, anyone likely to be reading this is a hardcore political junky anyway, so we might as well take a look. Yesterday’s Q-poll looked at Governor McDonnell’s popularity rating*, which is – to be modest about it – practically | Read More »
Shocking. I mean that literally: the control chip must have shorted out, or something. Representative Connolly finally admitted something that we all already knew: forget about what the 2008 map looked like. This is going to be a 2004 election, or maybe a 2000 election: Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) said if the 2012 presidential election was held today, President Barack Obama wouldn’t win Virginia, a | Read More »
Jim Geraghty has the report. And it is my devout hope that Tim Kaine brings the same competence and drive to the upcoming Senate election in Virginia that Tim Kaine previously brought to the Chris Christie, Bob McDonnell, Scott Brown, Martha Roby, Mo Brooks, Rick Crawford, Tim Griffin, Steve Womack, Paul Gosar, Ben Quayle, David Schweikert, Jeff Denham, Scott Tipton, Cory Gardner, Steve Southerland, Rich | Read More »
The word is that Tim Kaine (former governor of Virginia and current head of the DNC) is on the verge of declaring his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for Virginia Senator, and I for one support that move thoroughly. Why? Well, because of his record. Below is a chart comparing the number of Democrats (and Democratic-controlled legislatures) at the start of Kaine’s tenure in January | Read More »
The bill requires that facilities that perform more than five first trimester abortions per month be subject to the same regulations as hospitals, which will hopefully help keep down the kind of abuses that were documented here by Live Action (and, much more horrifyingly, the atrocities committed in Pennsylvania by Kermit Gosnell). This rather commonsense consistency in regulating abortions would be normally out of reach | Read More »
Just couldn’t handle the thought of running again for VA-SEN, apparently – although I’m sure that the lack of money didn’t help much there, either. Or the fact that Webb was practically guaranteed a messy primary, thanks to his race-related thoughtcrime last year. What ever it was, this isn’t a surprise, of course: it was obvious last week that Webb didn’t have the right stuff | Read More »
Here’s a really good rule of thumb: when you’ve done something not only dumb, but actually vile – in this case, if you’ve declared that wearing your country’s uniform for twenty-four years is not ‘public service*’ – don’t compound the error later by trying to explain it away. Jim Moran (D, VA-08) apparently does not understand this rule of thumb, which is why he is | Read More »
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