Matt Bevin’s Kentucky Win Is the End of an Era — And That Should Scare Democrats Everywhere

A great piece, from Josh Kraushaar, at National Journal:

Former House Speak­er Tip O’Neill fam­ously said, “all polit­ics is loc­al.” After Re­pub­lic­an Matt Bev­in’s sur­pris­ingly con­vin­cing vic­tory to be­come Ken­tucky’s next gov­ernor, the max­im should be re­versed. All loc­al polit­ics are now na­tion­al. Bev­in, with help from the Re­pub­lic­an Gov­ernors As­so­ci­ation, ef­fect­ively util­ized na­tion­al is­sues—gay mar­riage, Planned Par­ent­hood, fed­er­al en­ergy policy, Pres­id­ent Obama’s health care law—to bludgeon Demo­crat Jack Con­way, who tried to dis­tance him­self from his party’s na­tion­al brand to no avail.

And the biggest drag of all for Con­way was Obama. The RGA un­leashed a last-week $1 mil­lion ad blitz con­nect­ing the Demo­crat­ic state at­tor­ney gen­er­al to Obama—a po­tent line of at­tack in a state where the pres­id­ent’s dis­ap­prov­al rat­ing is near 70 per­cent.

Just as the Ken­tucky gubernat­ori­al cam­paign car­ried na­tion­al over­tones, the res­ults from Tues­day night’s elec­tion carry na­tion­al les­sons. Here are four of the most sig­ni­fic­ant takeaways...

Keep reading.

And ICYMI, the best piece since last Tuesday, from Molly Ball, "Leftists Are Losing the Culture Wars?"