Truthout is an indispensable resource for activists, movement leaders and workers everywhere. Please make this work possible with a quick donation.
If the reaction from prominent right-wing media figures is any indication, conservatives are having a very hard time coping with the resounding loss of Republican candidate Ed Gillespie in the Virginia gubernatorial election on Tuesday.
We can start with Ann Coulter.
Hey @EdWGillespie! If your pals, George Bush & Haley Barbour, had been a little less enthusiastic about open borders, you would have won tonight.
— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) November 8, 2017
If @realDonaldTrump doesn’t keep his campaign promise to build a wall & deport illegals, what happened to VA will happen to the entire country.
— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) November 8, 2017
Right-wing talk show host Laura Ingraham echoed those thoughts, telling her audience on Tuesday night, “Gillespie never jumped on board the Trump train. He’s an old Bush hand. I think he gave it his best shot. He is who he is — not a populist conservative.”
Sean Moran of Breitbart had a similar take.
“Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie’s loss to Ralph Northam represents a repudiation of the Republican establishment; Gillespie lost by more points than Donald Trump and Ken Cuccinelli,” Moran wrote on Wednesday.
Other conservative pundits have tried to paint the Republican disaster in Virginia as a question of demographics rather than anything specific about Trump.
“Tuesday night’s slaughter is more of a representation of Virginia’s rapidly changing demographics have made it a solid blue state — regardless of Trump,” wrote Scott Greer of The Daily Caller.
Similarly, Doug Schoen of Fox News wrote that Virginia is now a “seemingly reliable blue state,” attributing Gillespie’s loss to the fact that minorities turned out in large numbers for Democratic candidate Ralph Northam. Schoen did acknowledge that “to the extent President Trump was a factor in the election, he was a major negative to Gillespie’s candidacy.”
Among Republican politicians, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan told an audience on Wednesday, “It doesn’t change my reading of the current moment.”
He added, “I fundamentally believe, when we deliver on comprehensive tax reform and tax relief . . . I think that’s going to bear fruit politically, but most importantly it’s going to help people.”
Similarly, a source close to Trump’s political team told the conservative newspaper The Washington Examiner that both Gillespie’s loss and that of Kim Guadagno, the Republican gubernatorial candidate in New Jersey, could be attributed to “local dynamics” and “history.”
“These are blue states that the president did not win last year. This is not about the president,” the source told the Examiner.
A terrifying moment. We appeal for your support.
In the last weeks, we have witnessed an authoritarian assault on communities in Minnesota and across the nation.
The need for truthful, grassroots reporting is urgent at this cataclysmic historical moment. Yet, Trump-aligned billionaires and other allies have taken over many legacy media outlets — the culmination of a decades-long campaign to place control of the narrative into the hands of the political right.
We refuse to let Trump’s blatant propaganda machine go unchecked. Untethered to corporate ownership or advertisers, Truthout remains fearless in our reporting and our determination to use journalism as a tool for justice.
But we need your help just to fund our basic expenses. Over 80 percent of Truthout’s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors.
Truthout has launched a fundraiser, and we have a goal to add 182 new monthly donors in the next 24 hours. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger one-time gift, Truthout only works with your support.