The flap over how Jerry Kilgore talks and what he says is penetrating the mainstream press after flying around the blogoshpere for several weeks. The Richmond Times-Dispatch has a piece today that, despite its neutral tone, somehow caused Jim Bacon over at Bacon’s Rebellion to change his mind. Now Bacon thinks Kilgore’s is making too much of the Kaine ad where the candidate asks why Kilgore won’t speak for himself in his radio and TV ads.
Look, to a lot people, Kilgore talks funny. But it has nothing to do with his southern accent or his sexual orientation. It’s about his sounding like a sissy. And sissy, except to the true bigoted regressives, isn’t about sexual orientation. The problem is his voice is so sissified that some people are going to find it hard to accept him when they hear him speak. Those people are going to be rednecks from the Southwest and business people from Northern Virginia. In both cases, the people judging him on his speech patterns are prejudiced, but the bottom political line is that it will sway votes.
Therefore, I think the only way the Kilgore campaign can counter it is by accusing Kaine of being bigoted against a southern accent. It’s not a bad tactic. But the bottom line is that more people are going to want to hear Kilgore speak. But the more he holds off, the better off he might be. When people finally do listen to him, he can’t possibly be as bad as people might imagine. Could he?
But perspective here: When a Democratic candidate for a House seat was canvassing this weekend, a common comment he heard when mentioning the governor’s race was something along the line of , “I know their last names begin with “K” but I can’t for the life of me get it straight who’s who.”
It’s still a long way until most of the electorate wake up to this race. Take this flap and the polls with a grain of salt.