Tuesday, April 02, 2013

Will Ken Cuccinelli's Slavery-Abortion Video Doom His Gubernatorial Bid?

Few current day Republican politicians are as certifiably insane in my opinion as Ken "Kookinelli" Cuccinelli.  If the Christofascists elements of the GOP want an extremists politician pushing their "values" at the ballot box, then Kookinelli is their man.  The question is, however, whether sane and rational voters will ultimate run screaming from Kookinelli once they become better informed of what a nutcase and extremists he is in fact.  This is especially true of women whose wombs Kookinelli seeks to control and monitor.  A piece in Mother Jones looks at Kookinelli's extremism on abortion (he wants to end it completely):

The Virginia governor's mansion always seemed like a high ambition for Ken Cuccinelli, who is arguably America's most divisive state attorney general. Now that he's officially running on the GOP ticket, even Republicans admit that Cuccinelli—an unabashed culture warrior who has led the fight against Obamacare—needs to avoid the controversies that piled up during his three years as AG. (Sample headlines: "Ken Cuccinelli's climate-change witch hunt." "Virginia attorney general to colleges: End gay protections." "After breast controversy, Cuccinelli ditches new staffer lapel pins.") Virginia voters, as Gov. Bob McDonnell demonstrated in 2009, are more likely to support a calm, reasonable conservative who focuses on jobs and the economy.

But the latest row in the gubernatorial race, which pits Cuccinelli against former Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe, has put the spotlight back on Cuccinelli's hardline views. A week ago, the state Democratic Party released a short video from a June 2012 event for the pro-life Family Foundation. In the clip, Cuccinelli compares the anti-abortion movement to the abolitionist movement. "Our experience as a country has demonstrated that on one issue after another," he said. "Start right at the beginning, slavery. Today, abortion. You know, history has shown us what the right position was."

[T]he release of the clip has spawned nearly two dozen stories in the state and local media, condemnations from fellow pols, cries of support from conservatives, and fresh scrutiny of Cuccinelli's history of comments related to abortion. In short, it has breathed new life into the debate over whether Cuccinelli's view on social issues are too extreme. "The [Virginia] GOP would prefer to campaign on economic issues, so potentially inflammatory statements about abortion are off-message," says Charles Walcott, a professor emeritus of political science at Virginia Tech. "That's why the Democrats are massaging this one—it fits into the 'Cooch is an extremist' narrative."

Robert Holsworth, a retired political science professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, would concur. "While people in the movement are not offended at all, suggesting moral equivalence between something as horrible and brutal as slavery and abortion, it antagonizes many people outside the movement," he told the Associated Press. "And the Democrats are going to use that to their advantage because they want people to find [Cuccinelli] an extremist from another planet."

Soon after the video's release, the Washington Examiner dug up a 2008 version of the same comment; Cuccinelli, then a state senator, drew connections between the work of the famous abolitionist William Wilberforce and his own efforts to restrict abortion. 

Truth be told, I suspect there are hours and hours of footage in existence that show Kookinelli going off the rails.  Let's hope the Democrats get their hands on a great deal of it and run the footage over and over.

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