After dropping the last two presidential elections and the last three US Senate races, Virginia Republicans had good reason for optimism heading into this fall’s elections: Terry McAuliffe, the former Democratic National Committee chair who bragged about nearly missing his child’s birth so he could party with a gossip columnist, is at the top of the Democratic ticket. Things should be looking up for the Virginia GOP. Instead, the party’s activists have resisted calls for moderation and swerved hard to the right quicker than you can say transvaginal ultrasound.

Ken Cuccinelli, the Republican party’s nominee for governor, once cited Martin Luther King Jr. (Read more…) as justification for his argument that sexual relations between two people of the same gender should be illegal. E.W. Jackson, the party’s nominee for lieutenant governor, believes that gays are “degenerate” and “spiritually darkened” and will eventually destroy America. Mark Obenshain, the party’s nominee for attorney general, recently attempted to require women to contact the police within 24 hours of a miscarriage.

The immediate cause is obvious. Virginia Republicans don’t select their executive ticket via primary. Instead, they chose their slate last Saturday at a one-day nominating convention packed with grassroots activists. Jackson, a Baptist preacher who finished in the low single digits in last year’s US Senate primary, was able to win on the first ballot by virtue of well-received speech typified by lines like, “I am not an African American, I am an American!”

“Conventions are not representative of the party,” says Tom Davis, a former Republican congressman from Northern Virginia, referring to Jackson’s nomination. “When you get a convention, this is what you get.”

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