Virginia is a must-win state for Republicans in 2012, but not for Democrats even though President Barack Obama carried the state in 2008, according to political strategist James Carville.
“Right now Virginia is to Democrats what Wisconsin is to Republicans,” Carville told the
Richmond Times-Dispatch Wednesday night prior to a speech at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Va.
“Republicans could lose Wisconsin and still win the presidency. We can lose Virginia and still win,” Carville added. “But if we win Virginia, we win the presidency. It’s a must-win swing state for Republicans.
“If Obama wins Virginia, call the dogs in and pee on the fire because it’s over,” he declared.
Carville, who helped engineer President Bill Clinton’s march to the White House in 1992, told the newspaper he believes Democrats are a “slight favorite” at the moment to win the state.
Obama was the first Democrat to carry Virginia in a presidential election since 1964. He won by six points over Republican nominee John McCain. Carville said the state has changed since, with a more ethnically diverse population and increased growth in the the traditionally Democratic stronghold of Northern Virginia.
He suggested, according to the Times-Dispatch, that this year’s likely Republican nominee Mitt Romney might not be up to the challenge.
“Obama is not running against '08, he’s running against Romney,” Carville said, describing Romney as “some ideologically constipated pretzel of a man who can’t figure out where he is from one day to the next.”
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