When Friends Get Too Close

Poor Ken Cuccinelli -- his friends are his worst enemy. First one of his supporters makes an anti-Semitic joke while introducing him at a rally (to Cuccinelli's credit he immediately condemned the remark). Now he's taking great steps to avoid being associated with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) -- a goal with which Cruz is not exactly cooperating:

In the clearest sign yet of the potent effect of the government shutdown on the Virginia governor’s race, Republican Ken Cuccinelli avoided being photographed with Ted Cruz at a gala they headlined here Saturday night—even leaving before the Texas senator rose to speak.
[...]
For his part, Cruz heaped praise on his “friend” Cuccinelli and argued passionately in a 54-minute speech that their party can still win the messaging fight over the shutdown if the people just speak out loudly enough.

“Ken is smart, he’s principled and he’s fearless,” said Cruz, in a line that may give the left fodder for attack ads, given how the campaign has gone. “And that last characteristic in particular is a rare, rare commodity in elected life. There are so many elected officials in both parties that desperately crave the adulation of the media and the intelligentsia.”

That sequence honestly made me laugh out loud -- I can just imagine Cooch backstage muttering "shutupshutupshutup!"

Cruz, of course, does not shut up.

The Only Winning Move Is Not To Play

Virginia AG Ken Cuccinelli has severed the state of Virginia's connection with King & Spaulding, which has been in the news for agreeing to, then withdrawing from, representation of the House of Representatives in the DOMA litigation. K&S partner Paul Clement then resigned in protest, and the whole thing has been a massive mess for the Atlanta-firm.

The consensus is that K&S withdrew under pressure from Coca-Cola, one of its biggest clients. Virginia is not as big a money-source as Coke, but the bigger point is that there is no winning move here for a large, wide-ranging firm like K&S. Once they agreed to represent the pro-DOMA side, they were doomed no matter what they did. I agree that they had an obligation (upon entering into representation) to see it to the end, but the only true winning move would have been not to get involved in the first place.