The NY Times and Washington Post do pieces that point to how Glenn Youngkin danced with Donald Trump, but from afar limiting his chaotic self centered noise….
And got him to even help turn out Republican voters….
Less was …..MORE…
Donald Trump, in a sense, got used…..
This allowed the next Virginia Governor’s a Republican get Trump’s supporters, but keep him far enough out the picture to NOT have him drive up Democratic ‘Get out the Vote’ numbers….
True to form?
And Trump has already tried to claim credit for himself for the Republican win in Virginia…
How will Trump react to this going forward?
“President Trump represents so much of why I’m running,” Mr. Youngkin said at the time.
But thereafter, Mr. Youngkin mainly kept quiet about the former president. Mr. Trump, in turn, made no public demands of fealty and encouraged his Virginia supporters to flood the polls, something he refused to do ahead of the January special elections in Georgia that gave Democrats control of the Senate.
Mr. Youngkin focused his campaign on education policy, eliminating taxes on groceries and gasoline, and other local issues that were hardly Trump priorities. He insisted that he planned to run his own race, staying away from two rallies that Mr. Trump called into. And he rarely spoke about the issues that used to motivate the Republican base, such as gun rights or opposing abortion.
But embedded in his education policy was a pitch to the same white grievance politics that fueled Mr. Trump’s campaign — an attack on critical race theory, a graduate-level academic framework that has become a stand-in for a debate over what to teach about race and racism in American schools. In Virginia, it served as a catchall rallying cry akin to the states’ rights battles of generations past.
And the Democrats seemed to help Mr. Youngkin more than Mr. Trump did.
Mr. Youngkin did not need to remind Mr. Trump’s supporters that the former president had backed him. His Democratic opponent, Terry McAuliffe, turned much of his campaign, and his closing argument above all, into a message tethering Mr. Trump and Mr. Youngkin together, a gambit designed to energize the Democratic base — which it did in Northern Virginia….
…
Mr. Youngkin successfully fused the Republican Party’s past and present, building a coalition of Trump partisans and moderates who disengaged with the G.O.P. during the former president’s White House tenure.
The Republican turnout on Tuesday — aided by an expansion of the mail-in and early-voting laws denounced by Mr. Trump — swamped what otherwise would have been a respectable showing by Mr. McAuliffe, whose total, while still being counted, showed he won at least 500,000 more votes than he received during his winning 2013 campaign.
But Mr. Youngkin did a notch better, with his pro-Trump and anti-Trump coalition, a theme he hewed to during his victory remarks….
….
Mr. Youngkin’s triumph may inspire copycat Republicans eager to win the allegiance of Mr. Trump’s supporters without a sustained public embrace of the former president. The tricky part will be doing so without alienating elements of the party critical to winning in competitive contests.
As results poured in showing Mr. Youngkin ahead on Tuesday night, Mr. Trump issued three separate self-congratulatory statements. Then on Wednesday morning, Mr. Trump told John Fredericks, a conservative radio host and the chairman of his 2016 and 2020 campaigns in Virginia, that Mr. Youngkin would have been crushed without his support….
The Wash Post piece points out that in Virginia?
People do NOT know if Youngkin is a Trumpite….
Or just used the former President to get over and will more of ‘gasp’…Larry Hogan ‘centrist ‘ Republican….
A ‘sheep in wolves clothing?’
The former co-CEO of the Carlyle Group private equity firm ran on a moderately conservative platform of tax cuts and economic development. But he also stoked culture-war issues of race and transgender identity in schools.
He rarely mentioned Donald Trump on the campaign trail, but he allowed surrogates to appear with right-wing provocateur and former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon and invoke baseless claims about 2020 election fraud.
His opponent in the governor’s race, Democrat Terry McAuliffe, hinged his candidacy on branding Youngkin as “Trumpkin” or “Trump in khakis.”…
…
The broader question about Youngkin involves matters of tone and culture. McAuliffe, for instance, ran for governor on a call to make the state more welcoming and inclusive to people of all sexual orientations to attract new businesses and jobs. Youngkin has suggested that he is personally opposed to same-sex marriage, but his campaign later clarified that he will respect the law, which permits it.
While the governor-elect embraced culture-war issues to build enthusiasm among the Trump base of the GOP — “election integrity,” critical race theory, parents objecting to certain books in school classrooms — he also spent the summer introducing himself to voters as friendly and nonthreatening…..
image…WNET
Much ado about nothng.
A MAGA red hat wearing Bootlicker who was communicating withTrump the entire campaign, a racial provocateur using White Nationalist Tucker Carlsons playbook while playing footsie with domestic terrorist Steve Bannon.
In short a typical Republican 2021.
Meanwhile in Illinois retiring GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger is considering a run for Senate, Governor or President.
Sorry didn’t mean to double post on two different threads
No problem