Shot-callers for Whatley = same crowd who blew McCrory re-election, Va. redistricting, and are propping up Cornyn & Graham

I heard someone define insanity as doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result each time.  The political class in Raleigh and DC are famous for that kind of thing.  Campaign politics is rife with instances where abysmal failure and gross incompetence gets rewarded with even more money and even more business opportunities for the offenders. 

Republican US Senate candidate Mike Whatley appears to be getting left in the dust in the money chase.  Roy Cooper is winning *bigly* every poll that’s come out since Whatley’s July announcement.  Cooper is winning the name-ID and likability competition. And to make matters worse, some of these online digital markets for bitcoin, etc. are predicting an 87 percent chance that Roy Cooper wins it all in November.

Much of the major decisions in the Whatley campaign are being made in DC.  Many of those decisions are being made by people whose names were all over Pat McCrory‘s loss of a very winnable race against Roy Cooper in 2016. They’re also all over current campaigns to save RINOs Lindsey Graham (SC) and John Cornyn (TX) from conservative primary challengers.

Some fairly recent reporting indicates that some of the same people we’re talking about HERE were also responsible for screwing up opposition to a major Democrat power-grab in Virginia:

With $807M cash on hand across the GOP, Republicans would’ve needed 0.25 percent to stop the gerrymander — they spent 12x that on Cornyn instead.

? PULSE POINTS  /  THE GRIFT WHAT HAPPENED —  Virginia voters narrowly approved a Democrat-drawn mid-decade congressional gerrymander by just 81,188 votes — 51.3 to 48.7 percent. The constitutional amendment hands the Democrat-controlled General Assembly power to redraw Virginia’s congressional districts through October 31, 2030, flipping the state’s U.S. House delegation from 6-5 to 10-1. DRY POWDER—  The combined Republican political operation was sitting on over $807 million cash on hand — RNC, MAGA Inc., SLF, CLF, NRCC, and NRSC combined — versus just $259 million on the Democrat side. Just 0.25 percent of that total could have closed the 81,188-vote gap in Virginia. THE FIRM —  Virginians for Fair Maps — the losing “No” campaign — was run by Mike Young, a partner at FP1 Strategies, which was founded by Chris LaCivita. LaCivita is simultaneously the senior consultant for the Cornyn super PAC that spent $95 million attacking Ken Paxton. One firm. Two operations. Ninety-five million went one way. Twenty million went the other. VA SOURCE —  A Virginia source tells The National Pulse: “The money diverted to LaCivita’s groups and away from the Republican Party of Virginia/county parties was hard to accept. We had no money.”[…]

Folks familiar with NC GOP politics will remember LaCivita’s past ties with the NCGOP state organization and the Pat McCrory reelection campaign of 2016.  Go back up to the ‘Dry Powder’ section of the above excerpt.  During the Virginia fight, the GOP effort was sitting on $800 million while the Democrats had $260 million. And the Dems STILL won.

How does that happen?  All of the Raleigh cronies love to tell us fundraising means everything.  Yet, we’ve got two major recent events – Phil Berger’s primary election loss to Sam Page and the Virginia redistricting fight – where having the bigger bank account didn’t mean squat. 

There’s a lot to be said for BRAINS and organization.

In the end, it looks like the decision-making here cost the GOP a total of four US House seats in Virginia.  And – despite all of that RNC moolah to Cornyn — it looks like conservative Ken Paxton is likely to win in Texas.

As we approach November, keep in mind that Mr. LaCivita has been and likely STILL IS a major player in the Mike Whatley campaign.