Ken Cuccinelli and the fading of the religious right

[rug]

By Mark J. Rozell, Paul Goldman
November 12 at 8:16 am

The dominant narrative about the 2013 gubernatorial elections suggests an obvious reason for a Republican handily winning a blue state (New Jersey) and another losing a purple state (Virginia): The party fares best when it nominates candidates with moderate and cross-over voter appeal, it loses when it leans too far right.

Yet a stark and largely overlooked finding in the exit polls in the close race in Virginia suggests that GOP nominee Ken Cuccinelli lost for another reason: He failed to sufficiently mobilize his long-time core constituency of white evangelical Christians. Whereas in 2009 this group comprised 34 percent of the Virginia electorate, this year it was only 27 percent, a drop large enough to have made the difference in the unexpectedly close contest.

To be sure, some of this drop-off is due to the shrinking of the white share of the state population. But that demographic shift doesn’t nearly explain a more than 20 percent drop in white evangelical turnout from what it was four years ago. Something else is going on.

The social conservative and tea party wings of the GOP have blamed Cuccinelli’s loss, predictably, on defections by moderate Republicans who allegedly didn’t want a true conservative to win. Culture warrior Cuccinelli even wore the tea party label proudly, at times boasting that he was tea party before there ever was one.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/wp/2013/11/12/ken-cuccinelli-and-the-fading-of-the-religious-right/

[denverbill]

1. Maybe all those religious conservatives also have federal government jobs.

Or have a family member who does.

VA does have a huge federal employee workforce after all.

[cbayer]

2. Or it could be that even the religious right could see what a nut job Cuccinelli is.

To describe him as a "true conservative" is way too kind.

[longship]

3. I don't believe it for minute.

The religious right has a nearly total lock on Republican delegates, from the precinct level on up to the national. It's been that way for at least two decades. They aren't going away anytime soon. And the tea party are just as much a part of the religious right as the rest of the bunch.

[Nay]

4. I believe Cooch would have won if: 1) he had not committed gross

ethics violations that came to light right before the election; 2) the Libertarian candidate had not taken a good chunk of his votes; and 3) he had not had a crazy black preacher nominated for Lt Gov.


I'm surprised that this commentator mentioned none of those facts.