Topic: Newsmax
Things did not go well for Republicans in off-year elections in Virginia, and Newsmax struggled a bit to figure out how to spin it. A Nov. 8 column by John Gizzi admitted that one casualty of the election was Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin's presidential ambitions:
Two years after his dramatic capture of the Virginia governorship, Glenn Youngkin already was being boomed as a late-starting candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 — speculation about which he did little to dampen.
But on Tuesday, after his party failed miserably in a drive backed personally by Youngkin to capture the state senate — the Old Dominion State governor's dreams of a White House bid seemed to have evaporated.
Worse, Youngkin even lost Republican control of the lower House of Delegates to the Democrats.
The governor now faces two years of a legislature with Democrat [sic] majorities in both houses and thus very capable of thwarting his conservative agenda on issues ranging from abortion to taxes.
Indeed, later that day, an article by Solange Reyner confirmed that Youngkin "says he won't be running for president in 2024 after Republicans narrowly lost both state legislative chambers in Tuesday's election."
Pro-Trump pollster Jim McLaughlin, meanwhile, admitted that Republicans messed up by obsessing over abortion in a Nov. 8 Newsmax TV appearance:
Virginia's Republicans "made a mistake" by going on defense against Democrats' General Assembly campaigns that focused on abortion rights instead of going on offense on issues that the voters "really care about," said Jim McLaughlin of McLaughlin and Associates, who is also a pollster for former President Donald Trump's 2024 campaign.
"There's no question that Republicans underperformed in Virginia, but I saw one analysis that said the Democrats outspent them by almost $8 million," McLaughlin said on Newsmax's "National Report" about Tuesday's election, in which Democrats in Virginia won full control of the General Assembly.
McLaughlin acknowledged that "every race is different," but said that in Virginia and other places, making the race a "referendum on abortion" hurt Republican candidates.
Gizzi, however, returned for a Nov. 14 column in which he tried to spin results as not so bad after all:
In the week since elections in Virginia, the national press has made much political hay about the outcome — in which Democrats control both houses of the state legislature and are sure to lock horns with Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
To no one's surprise, Youngkin has since ended widespread speculation he would jump into the GOP presidential sweepstakes. Moreover, there is now ubiquitous analysis that the governor's support of a ban on abortion 15 weeks before birth — reasonable by virtually all standards but used as a "dog whistle" by many Democrat candidates to charge a Republican-ruled legislature would ban abortions under all circumstances.
But in the end, were the results in the Old Dominion State were a "wipeout" for Republicans? Hardly.
[...]
Much has been made in the press about many School Board candidates in Virginia endorsed by the pro-parents rights Moms for Liberty group falling short of an across-the-state sweep. There was considerable coverage devoted to the defeat of Meg Bryce, a daughter of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, losing a bid for the Albemarle County School Board to Allison Spillman, a liberal and mother of five (one of whom her campaign brochure describes as "a proud member of the LGBTQ community").
But another conservative, pro-family group, the Middle Resolution, endorsed 28 winning School Board candidates throughout the state.
Only 7 Middle Resolution-backed candidates lost.
All told, November 7 was not a day Virginia Republicans want to remember. But it wasn't a bad day, either.
Gizzi's only glimmer of hope was that Repubilcans appeared to have won a seat in the state Senate, though Democrats would still hold a three-seat advantage.
