Does ‘grand delusion’ define the 2013 election, aftermath?

Examiner – by Dave Workman

Today’s election coverage in the Seattle Times and Seattle P-I.com is more revealing about local and national politics than one might suspect, unless one happens to be in the firearms community where “grand delusions” give way to matter-of-fact reality.

Both news organs report anti-gun Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn trailing anti-gun Sen. Ed Murray by aconsiderable margin, yet declining to concede. Delusion has been part of McGinn’s problem for the past four years, particularly when it comes to firearms and their owners. He pursued a reckless–at-best attempt to dance around state preemption and lost big time to the Second Amendment Foundation, National Rifle Association and their allies. In the process, he did exactly the opposite of what he intended: He set the legal stage for state preemption to be strengthened.  

He thought he could practice social bigotry by proxy via the so-called “gun-free zone” campaign, when he attempted to climb in bed with Washington Ceasefire late in the campaign, but Ceasefire had the smarts to not endorse him. His election party was held last night at 95 Slide, a sports bar that joined the gun-free zone roster symbolically, since liquor laws don’t allow guns in the place anyway. Likewise, Murray supporters gathered at another gun–free bar, Neumo’s.

By catering to his minority core supporters – the bicyclists and Sierra Club tree huggers – and pushing his anti-gun and anti-car crusade against a voting bloc, McGinn demonstrated a political ineptitude shared by community organizers and liberal activists-turned-politicians everywhere: They fall in so far over their heads that even the curb appears on the skyline, and then live in denial. (Witness Barack Obama and the Obamacare debacle, about which he is now furiously spinning the truth.)

Murray’s history in the Legislature has been anti-gun, but his embarrassment earlier this year with a piece of gun ban legislation may have taught him a lesson.

In Virginia, victorious anti-gun Democrat Terry McAuliffe outspent Republican Ken Cuccinelli better than 2-to-1 by some estimates, yet he only eked out a narrow win because a spoiler third party candidate pulled in more than 145,000 votes that largely would have gone to Cuccinelli. That margin would have easily put the Republican in the governor’s mansion. The Blaze is already reporting that there may be an interesting link between the Democrats and the third party effort.

McAuliffe’s skin-of-the-teeth win is hardly a mandate, and it should send a signal that the “gun vote” is alive and well in the Old Dominion.

McAuliffe and Murray will need to remember they are elected to serve all of the people, including people who own guns.

Republican Chris Christie won a second term in the gulag of New Jersey. Earlier this year, he vetoed some nasty anti-gun legislation, but he may have done that to gain gun owner votes. Until Christie signs a full pardon for gun law victim Brian Aitken, and then challenges the New Jersey Legislature to reform state gun laws so that what happened to Aitken can never happen again to anybody, gun owners will be wary of the governor who buddied with President Obama.

Michael Bloomberg’s successor was elected yesterday. When liberal Democrat Bill de Blasio takes over, it frees up billionaire Bloomberg to mix more of his money into anti-gun political efforts. One of those efforts may be to support the campaign to pass Initiative 594, the 15-page gun control measure here in Washington.

http://www.examiner.com/article/does-grand-delusion-define-the-2013-election-aftermath