New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie had a good week. Tuesday brought his easy re-election to a second term, leading to more talk about his enhanced place in the Republican 2016 presidential pecking order. But Tuesday night’s numbers may not tell us as much about Mr. Christie’s 2016 possibilities as some […] Read more »
The GOP Still Hasn’t Figured Out How to Get On With the Tea Party
Postmortems of odd-year and special elections often suffer from overly broad generalizations that push a particular narrative while overlooking any arguments that get in the way. The instant analyses also tend to suffer from the impulse to extrapolate results and divine great meaning, as if they foreshadow the future. I’ll […] Read more »
What Democrats have going for them? Republicans
… Conservatives are already explaining away the Cuccinelli defeat. He was vastly outspent by McAuliffe. He was tarnished the incumbent Republican governor’s ethics scandal. He was hurt by the government shutdown — which was, of course, engineered by Tea Party Republicans. One in three Virginia voters said someone in their household […] Read more »
Why Chris Christie’s Popularity May Tear His Party Apart
Chris Christie has become a national phenomenon. His “crushing margin” for re-election as governor of New Jersey on Tuesday has landed him on the cover of Time. He’s now considered a “leading contender” for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. Christie clearly has the attention of the national media, as […] Read more »
Lessons on Immigration in Two Governors’ Races
Republicans in Congress studying the results from the governors’ elections in New Jersey and Virginia on Tuesday see two starkly different test cases for how the party should move on immigration. In New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie was boosted to a blowout victory by more than 20 points in part […] Read more »
Black voters were a big reason McAuliffe won in Virginia
Democrat Terry McAuliffe lost white voters to Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli by 20 points in the Virginia governor’s race, 56-36 percent. But McAuliffe still won the election by 3 points, 48-45 percent. How is that possible when more than seven-in-10 (72 percent) of Virginia voters Tuesday were white? Simple: […] Read more »