If the reaction of prominent figures in the right-wing media is any indication, conservatives are having a hard time coping with Republican candidate Ed Gillespie's stunning defeat in Virginia's gubernatorial election on Tuesday.
We can start with Ann Coulter.
Hello @EdWGillespie! If your buddies, George W. Bush and Haley Barbour, had been less enthusiastic about open borders, you'd have won tonight.
— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) November 8, 2017
If @realDonaldTrump fails to keep his campaign promise to build a wall and deport illegal immigrants, what happened to VA will happen to the entire country.
— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) November 8, 2017
Right-wing talk show host Laura Ingraham echoed these thoughts: telling his audience on Tuesday night“Gillespie never jumped on the Trump train. He's an old Bush aide. I think he gave it his best shot. He's who he is, not a populist conservative.”
Breitbart's Sean Moran had a similar opinion.
“The defeat of Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie by Ralph Northam represents a rejection of the Republican establishment; Gillespie lost by a larger margin than Donald Trump and Ken Cuccinelli.” Moran wrote on Wednesday..
Other conservative pundits have tried to frame the Republican disaster in Virginia as a matter of demographics rather than anything specifically about Trump.
“Tuesday night’s massacre is more a reflection of how Virginia’s rapidly changing demographics have turned it into a solid blue state — Trump notwithstanding,” he said. wrote Scott Greer of The Daily Caller.
Likewise, Doug Schoen of Fox News wrote that Virginia is now a “seemingly reliable blue state,” attributing Gillespie's defeat to the fact that minorities turned out in large numbers for Democratic candidate Ralph Northam. Schoen acknowledged that “to the extent that President Trump played a decisive role in the election, he was a major negative factor for Gillespie's candidacy.”
Among Republican politicians, House Speaker Paul Ryan told the audience on Wednesday: “It doesn’t change my understanding of the current moment.”
He added: “I strongly believe that when we get comprehensive tax reform and tax breaks… I think it will pay off politically, but most importantly it will help people.”
Likewise, a source close to Trump's political team told a conservative newspaper The Washington Examiner argues that both the loss of Gillespie and the loss of Kim Guadagno, the Republican gubernatorial candidate in New Jersey, can be explained by “local dynamics” and “history.”
“These are blue states that the president didn't win last year. This is not about the president,” a source told the Examiner.
