The results are in and now it’s time to sift through the ashes in search of a narrative.
A few threads are easily found.
First: money doesn’t always matter (but spending nearly a million probably saved Walter Stosch’s political career).
Second: it wasn’t a pretty night for incumbents (see Bell, Williams and Lambert).
Third: Tim Kaine pulls a Gilmore in the Joannou race. Kaine and Gilmore increasingly look like opposite sides of the same coin.
Fourth: Conservatives won a few big victories…but will they be phyrric?
Fifth: George Allen returns to play in the races, and places a lot of winning bets on RINOs. The idea that these candidates somehow embody Jeffersonian-conservative ideals makes me wonder whether Allen is speaking of Thomas Jefferson, or George Jefferson.
(Cross posted at Bearing Drift)
Why Pyrrhic
Why would the Conservative wins be Pyrrhic? You think the Conservatives will lose to Dems in the General Election or what?
Perhaps another conclusion
Perhaps another conclusion is that the netroots are not as strong as we thought they were. Three candidates pushed hardest by the netroots were Henry Light (D-vs Joannou for HoD), Charlie Hall (D-for Providence Supervisor in Fairfax) and Scott Sayre (R-for Senate vs. Hanger). All lost.
Light's loss is especially interesting as he had all the advantages save incumbency (which in this case trumped the others.) Think about it: Light had loads of money, TV, Mark Warner's endorsement, and the netroots and STILL lost. I don't think Joannou even had a website!
Phyrric, perhaps
JAB-
I'm not sure the victories will be phyrric -- only that they could be. And that's based purely on the highly unscientific results of the 2005 campaigns, where strong conservatives like Chris Craddock and Michael Golden were overwhelmed in the general elections (though, to be fair, they were fighting against an electoral tide not of their own making).
Smith and Stall showed it was possible to win with almost no money and they are to be congratulated for running genuine grassroots campaigns. I wonder if that same momentum and effort will be able to carry them through a general election, with the greater scrutiny and opposition resources it will bring.
And as for the Joannou/Light race...that one is very interesting, indeed, as was the Sayre/Hanger race and even the Gill/Lucas convention fight some weeks back. Online activism make work to a degree statewide. But locally, it's not yet relevant.
Norm
Roger, Norm
Norm, I know you tire of my adulation, but you nailed it again.
Netroots < Grassroots (today, locally, Virginia)
The winning peasants in the 07 races are quite different than the earnest young volk who won in 05. The general elections will be quite different.
I can't comment on the other
I can't comment on the other races with any personal knowledge. However, the Roanoke race is not the typical cookie cutter paradigm we've read about in years past.
The cookie cutter model is that you have a "likeable, community oriented, mainstream, moderate Republican" v. "ideological, mouth-breathing, outsider, politically-obsessed conservative"
That just wasn't so in the Bell-Smith race. Smith is a well-liked guy by a number of folks in the Roanoke area regardless of their political persuasion. While he is conservative, he's got a lot of ties to the "in crowd" in the area and he is a charismatic likeable guy. Bell's a nice guy. However, he's not as well-connected as Smith and he most assuredly is not charismatic.
In this race, the media's usual cookie cutter portrayal of GOP primaries just didn't carry water.
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