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The
flat-earth wing of Virginia’s Republican Party is
no more.
Didn’t
you hear? They ignored the map notation that said
“Dragons Lurk Here” and sailed their ship right
off the edge of the universe Tuesday. Thank you,
Grover Norquist.)
Tsk.
Tsk. Let us mourn for them.
Briefly.
Okay,
that’s enough. The headlines read, generally,
“State-wide tickets set for November.” The
closer truth would have been: “Welcome to Mark
Warner’s Centrist Virginia,” for that is the
realization that we woke to Wednesday—a new era in
Virginia politics, a new Old Dominion—one that has
learned that good politics is not always good policy
and now eschews the fringe extremes, left and right,
and now demands to be governed by Warner’s
centrist template.
What
is that template? Warner lays it out in Notes from
the sausage factory, a forthcoming book on Virginia
politics: “I think they’re [the people of
Virginia] pleased that we found a ‘sensible
center.’ They know that political platitudes
and incendiary rhetoric do not pay our teachers,
build our roads, or keep us safe from crime.”
He
could have easily included, “And neither do
pandering, gimmicky real estate tax schemes.”
Norquist,
president of Americans for Tax Reform, had promised
scorched Earth retribution against House Republicans
who joined Warner in forging a bipartisan budget
compromise last year. Instead, he… well… got
scorched—and so did five of six opposition
candidates his organization backed.
The
anti-taxers’ lone win came when Chris Craddock, a
youthful youth minister, ousted Fairfax Delegate
Gary Reese. Any doubt about where Craddock will fit
into the political firmament came Tuesday night when
he was quoted by one of Virginia’s bloggers as
saying Jesus brought the voters to him.
Mug
shots of the five other targeted incumbents graced
"Virginia's Least Wanted" posters
distributed by the anti-taxers, but the incumbents
proved otherwise Tuesday and won handily—most by
wide, wide margins. Preston Bryant shelled his
challenger 3-1. “This election was a referendum on
me and the actions I took last year," Bryant
told The Washington Post. "My opponent
made sure that was the case.”
He
spoke a larger certainty: This election was a
referendum on centrist government in Virginia, what
Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at
the University of Virginia, described to the Post
as “the war between the moderates and the
conservatives in the GOP.” Think “small scale”
war.
Statewide,
less than four percent of the eligible voters
bothered in the governor’s race; only 2.6 percent
in the lieutenant governor’s contest. A handful of
rural counties logged less than a hundred voters:
Bath 91, Bland 97, Charles City 73, Highland 77.
How
many thrashings will it take before the Republican
Right gets the message? Well, that’s hard to say.
They clearly didn’t get it last year. They
didn’t get it Tuesday. And they won’t get it
between now and November, unless they figure out
some way to pretend that Bill Bolling and Bob
McDonnell are not on the ticket.
They’ve
got problems—no doubt about it—their biggest one
being that they don’t realize yet that they have a
problem.
Is
there no comfort for them anywhere, in any of this?
As
luck would have it, there is. Warner’s centrist
cloak is not one-size-fits-all. No—it is one that
he has stitched together himself, a pragmatic,
results-driven, business-oriented approach to
government that resonates across the spectrum of
Virginia politics. But if he is to pass it on,
alterations will have to be made.
Who
will wear it best? Kilgore? Please. The smart money
would be on Tim Kaine. But that’s not an
automatic, either. Should be, but it’s not. You
see, there is a complication. Wouldn’t you know
it? Russ Potts, the Independent up in Winchester,
has called his tailor in.
--
June 20, 2005
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