Re: Pat Buchanan

An interesting point on the VA race, made by fellow "McLaughlin Group" alumnus, Fred Barnes, in yesterday's OpinionJournal:

"Democrats are heralding the Kaine victory as predictive of Democratic triumphs nationally in 2006 and 2008. This is nonsense. What's actually predictive are presidential races. They tell us what to expect in Virginia. In the last eight statewide campaigns, the party that won the White House lost the gubernatorial election in Virginia a year later.

President Bush's election in 2000 was followed by Democrat Mark Warner's victory for governor in 2001. And Mr. Kaine's election in 2005 came on the heels of Mr. Bush's re-election in 2004. What happened after Gov. Warner won? Republicans, not Democrats, prevailed in the 2002 midterm election. There's a pattern here, but it's not a partisan one."

He goes on to discuss that VA still wasn't a huge loss for the party since LG and AG went Republican. Just found this interesting b/c we all knew if the Dems won, they'd be out there saying it was all over for the Republicans, when in fact, it's just status quo. No pickups for us, but no real losses either.

Next November will be the big test and I don't think the Dems will be so triumphant as long as candidates remember -- as Rush always says -- when Conservatives run as Conservatives, they win.

btw, Dennis, what about a butterfly flapping its wings in Europe? (sorry, bad Monty Python reference)