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he
liked, was remarkably even-handed in bashing both
candidates in the Washington Post. “Kaine and Kilgore have blasted out of the gate
in full pander mode, having said little on the
subject of property taxes before launching their
campaigns,” he wrote.
Bob
Gibson of the Daily
Progress, writing before Kilgore’s campaign
kick-off, balanced
muted criticism of Kaine’s proposal by pairing
it with Republican Lieutenant Governor hopeful Bill
Bolling’s plan. Gibson
recommend wariness in evaluating the two
candidates’ plans: “They may turn out to be more
good policy than mere promising, proposing and
pandering, but both should raise warning flags for
voters.”
In
the Richmond
Times-Dispatch,
Jeff
Schapiro also tried to appear balanced by
decrying “reckless
shifts in tax policy and expensive promises that
Kaine and his presumed Republican rival, Attorney
General Jerry W. Kilgore, might know in their heart
of hearts that they can't keep.”
He then proceeded to describe how Gov. Mark
R. Warner could attack Kilgore’s proposal while
allowing that Kaine’s proposal was “only
slightly less irresponsible than Kilgore's.”
The
negative reaction to Kaine and Kilgore’s early
policy pronouncements may be sincere, but it has the
added benefit of giving pundits an excuse to offer
more coverage to Russ Potts’ independent campaign
and George Fitch’s Republican primary challenge to
Kilgore. Bob
Gibson previewed
this coverage management technique by speculating on
the benefits to Potts of being denied a speaking
role at the annual Wakefield Shad Planking.
Of
course, Bacon’s
Rebellion own Barnie Day used the immediacy of
blogging to beat Gibson to the punch.
He was able to plant
a more subtle seed on behalf of Potts by appealing
to the ideals of free speech.
Those
Surprising Conservatives
The
conservative-bashing Gordon Morse was almost
incredulous that the
College
of
William
and Mary’s Board of Trustees, a group of “no
liberals,” hired Gene Nichol as the new president
of the college. Writing
in the Daily
Press, Morse marveled that this group would hire
someone “who twice ran for office in
Colorado
as a grass-roots, Paul Wellstone-styled Democrat”
and “who laces his speeches with quotes from Tony
Kushner, Barney Frank and Ralph Ellison.”
Schapiro
Watch
Norm
Leahy of the One
Man’s Trash blog kept up the pressure on Jeff
Schapiro, dissecting what he sees as the
columnist’s obvious bias.
Schapiro’s piece on the contradictions in U.S.
Sen. John Warner’s endorsement of Jerry
Kilgore was dismissed
by Leahy: “Warner's support has deprived you of
the narrative you crave: the irreconcilable divide
among state Republicans.”
Savoring
Secessionist Sentiment
Marc
Fisher of the Washington
Post, always a sucker for the oddities he
perceives south of the
Potomac
,
examined the rumble of secession in Loudoun
County here
and here.
A few citizens in the rural western part of
the county have proposed seceding from the more
pro-growth eastern portion. Fifty “rebels” attended a rally in
Purcellville to support forming a new county called
“Catoctin.” Virginia
has not formed a new county in 125 years, although
45 cities have been chartered during that period.
Just
what is it about eastern Loudoun life that western
resident fear and loathe?
Washington
Post blogger Joel
Achenbach went into the belly of the beast,
Ashburn, to give a talk and reported from its
“unfamiliar, alien landscape.”
But
one of the people at the talk said that Ashburn,
though initially repulsive to her, has turned into a
great place to raise kids.
In
a generous spirit we might venture that Ashburn is
egalitarian, indeed democratic. Everyone lives in a
two-story house with a garage and a deck out back.
The
suburban sprawl in the
Piedmont
still offends the eye, and is ruining one of the
most pastoral landscapes in America. The only way I would move to Ashburn is if my captors said I had no
choice, and even then I would request a blindfold.
But Ashburn exists for a reason, and its best days
may be ahead of it.
That
is assuming that Eastern and
Western Loudoun
do not raise armies in the secessionist battle.
Good
on the Environment, Good on Bacon
Those
annoying “I support candidate x” op-eds have
begun to appear. In
the Culpeper
Star-Exponent, W. Todd Benson extols
the environmental record of Republican challenger
George Fitch. Benson’s
piece is noteworthy for this line: “As online
pundit James A. Bacon observed, ‘Fitch stands out
as the only (candidate) who is passionately
dedicated to cutting spending and rolling back
taxes.’”
To
Drill or Not to Drill
Kerry
Dougherty of the Virginian-Pilot
has a piece on a story that has captured
surprisingly little attention: the possibility of
drilling for natural gas off the coast of Virginia.
Schiavo
in Virginia
Virginia
did not escape the media saturation of the Terri
Schaivo case. Robert
Griendling, Commonwealth
Commonsense blogger, published a poignant
commentary in the Richmond Times-Dispatch
on his family’s decision to remove the feeding
tube from his elderly father.
On his blog, Griendling has been critical of
congressional intervention in the Schaivo case and
supported the husband’s effort to remove the
feeding tube.
A
less-thoughtful approach to the case came from
former General Assembly member Chip
Woodrum. Writing in the Roanoke
Times, he dredged
up the
Virginia
case of Hugh Finn to blast former Gov. Jim Gilmore’s
actions in that long-ago controversy. Some compare and contrast between the Finn
and Schaivo cases seemed to be in order, but Woodrum
had no interest in that difficult analysis. He just
wanted to whack Gilmore.
David
Lerman of the Daily
Press examined the different approaches to the
case of Senators Warner and Allen.
Outreach
The
Roanoke Times
is calling for Southwest Virginia bloggers to
identify themselves for a possible link on this columnist
page. Will
The Salt
Lick, “Where balanced journalism is nourished
and the Roanoke Times is prey,” apply?
Will the Times
link to him?
Outsource
Your Satire
A
satiric look at the Kaine campaign by top Kilgore
operatives fell flat and one has to wonder why they
didn’t just let a real satirist do the work for
them. Bart
Hinkle of the Times-Dispatch
made great sport of Kaine’s “startling”
campaign pronouncement:
"Being
pro-people, both pro-homeowner and pro-education,
and fiscally responsible at the same time, that's
really who we are."
Despite
-- or perhaps because of -- its pithiness, the
statement was nothing less than revolutionary, and
all the more so for being made publicly, by a
candidate openly seeking elective office. Before
Kaine, such inflammatory sentiments were confined
primarily to radical-fringe samizdat weeklies, the
theoretical musings of tenured political philosophy
professors at small liberal-arts colleges, and the
occasional whispered concession by an elder
statesman who had had too much to drink.
With
Hinkle and the Virginia “samizdat” bloggers
observing the coming campaign, expect more great
satire on all sides.
-- March
28, 2005
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