Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is hoping a Republican presidential contender emerges from the primary process with “a well-articulated set of guideposts” and “positions that are consistent with what the founder’s envisioned.” But he’s not sure that candidate even exists.
“That is a standard, quite frankly, that no one in this field meets,” Cuccinelli told The Washington Examiner Tuesday. “I’m still looking at who gets closest.”
Cuccinelli will have an opportunity Saturday to assess most of the candidates in person when he participates in a Fox News forum in New York with Republican Attorneys General Scott Pruitt of Oklahoma and Pam Bondi of Florida. The trio will quiz six of the candidates about health care reform, environmental regulations and other issues that touch on state’s rights.
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Cuccinelli’s hesitance to support anyone in the current GOP presidential field is in line with his Tea Party backers and other conservative Republicans who have balked at the prospect of endorsing Mitt Romney, the front-runner for the party’s nomination whose conservative credentials voters question. Indeed, conservatives resisting Romney have turned to one candidate after another – including Texas Gov. Rick Perry, businessman Herman Cain and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Perry and Cain are slipping in the polls as voters grew disenchanted with them. Gingrich has surged and for now only narrowly trails Romney.
Virginia Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling is backing Romney. Gov. Bob McDonnell, who is leading the Republican Governors Association’s campaign efforts, hasn’t endorsed anyone but said he prefers a governor for the job.
But Cuccinelli says he won’t endorse any of the candidates until after he questions them personally Saturday and it’s possible he won’t make an endorsement at all.
“They all have substantial strengths, but they also all have very substantial weaknesses,” he said.
As a first-term attorney general who acknowledges higher political aspirations, Cuccinelli has garnered national attention for taking on the Environmental Protection Agency and suing President Obama’s administration over federal health care reform. He’s looking forward to asking the candidates about both those issues to “put meat on the bones of some of the rhetoric” that he believes plagued previous candidate debates, he said.
“I don’t think there’s any single candidate … that’s so spectacular that he leaps out to everyone that he’s the one,” Cuccinelli said.
