Let's look at a case example — Ed Gillespie. Jennifer Rubin gushes about Gillespie the "Happy Warrior" in The Washington Post.
He ran, [Gillespie] says, because he is deeply worried about the country and senses the economic anxiety felt by so many people. “There is a lot of economic insecurity in the country today. People are feeling the squeeze,” he says. Not surprisingly, he says, “Obamacare is a major contributor to that squeeze. People are paying more for healthcare. Maybe they are only working 28 hours [to avoid triggering the employer mandate]. Maybe they are not getting a job because small businesses aren’t hiring.” That nexus of economic anxiety, stagnant wages, historically high unemployment and underemployment, rising health-care costs and student debt, according to Gillespie, means less take-home pay. (That is a formulation which may prove powerful to the GOP in 2016, if someone is smart enough to grab hold of it.)See if you can guess which issue which underlines stagnant wages, rising health-care costs, American worker displacement, and high unemployment and underemployment that neither Rubin nor Gillespie want to talk about.[A one-on-one with Ed Gillespie, Virginia's happy warrior, by Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post, September 5, 2014]
Gillespie is the quintessential happy warrior, even when talking about the sorry state of the economy and dysfunctional politics. “I feel pretty much everywhere I go Americans are more pessimistic, and I try to fight that,” he says. “This is not a matter of fate. It’s a result of bad policies,” he contends. “We can do better than this!” He tells me, “We have a great deal of involvement from younger volunteers and voters. This cost shifting [of health-care expenses from older to younger Americans], the debt, the long-term viability of these [entitlement] programs — it is a real concern."How is this "powerful" agenda working out in the real world?
With less than two months until Election Day, U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner maintains a sizable lead over Republican challenger Ed Gillespie, in part with support from conservatives who crossed party lines to back the Democrat, a new poll shows.And who is Warner getting his votes from?According to a survey released Wednesday by the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University, Warner leads Gillespie 53 percent to 31 percent — a 22-point gap that is nearly unchanged from a poll taken in January. About 11 percent of voters are undecided, and Libertarian candidate Robert Sarvis attracts 5 percent of voters, the new poll shows.
[Warner maintains 22-point lead over Gillespie in Senate race, poll shows, by Jenna Portnoy, Washington Post, September 10, 2014]
Quentin Kidd, director of the Wason Center, said people whom he termed “Warner conservatives” were sticking with the Democrat in a year when Republicans are trying to capitalize on dissatisfaction with President Obama and Congress to win the Senate...The GOP can't win unless it turns out its white base. But under the leadership of people like Ed Gillespie (and the supervision of commissars like Rubin) the Republican Party would rather lose than be politically incorrect.“Mark Warner’s position as an incumbent Democrat in 2014 surely makes him the envy of all of those incumbent Democrats who are in trouble across the country,” Kidd said. “Warner not only has the solid backing of his own partisans but also significant levels of support among Republicans and ideological moderates and conservatives.”
The poll shows that Warner, who was governor from 2002 to 2006, is in a stronger position with Democrats — 91 percent of whom support him — than Gillespie is with Republicans — 80 percent of whom support him.
