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"I
don't approve of political jokes... I've seen too
many of them get elected." –Anonymous
Anyone
who served in our military forces is familiar with
the saying “Lead or get out of the way.” When
it comes to Virginia politics, we have too many
politicians who simply stand in the way.
Has
anyone heard recently from the Speaker of the
House of Delegates, William J. Howell, R-Stafford?
Just about everyone agrees that the Speaker is a
very nice gentleman. But in his role as the
Speaker, Howell must act both as a gentleman and
an officer.
Perhaps Speaker Howell
has been active around his home base—if so, no
one outside his District knows anything about it.
Few would argue, however, that the leader of the
House of Delegates must take a more active role.
There
is little doubt that in 2004 the House leadership
caved in to the triangulation strategy
orchestrated by Sen. John. Chichester, R-Northumberland.
By proposing a $4 billion tax increase Chichester
made Gov. Warner’s $1+ billion tax proposal seem
reasonable.
The House leadership’s response was
nothing short of trying to outsmart the Senate by
half. Astonishingly, the House moved from a
position of "no taxes" to meeting
Warner's tax-increase proposals half-way—and got
nothing in return for complete capitulation.
Throughout
these political machinations, Speaker Howell’s
articulated positions were as clear as mud. He
touted that the House would hold the line on
taxes, while at the same time saying that raising
certain taxes would be acceptable.
In
the end, when 19 liberal Republicans sided with
the Democrat minority, the response from the House
leadership was muted. Instead of punishing the
turncoats for voting against the Republican
leadership, the leadership of the House Caucus
told the RINOs (Republican In Name Only) to vote
their consciences.
None of the renegades faced any
consequences for their votes; more importantly,
none of the committee chairmen who voted for the
tax increase lost control of their committees.
This ineffective response allowed the RINOs to
claim that they did the courageous
thing—indirectly implying that the majority of
the Republicans Delegates didn’t have a
backbone.
Later,
when conservatives challenged a number of the
RINOs, the moderate Republican establishment cried
out against the challengers. In the end,
conservatives were blamed for the loss of a few
Republican seats.
When
some of the RINOs publicly supported Democrat
candidates—as was the case with Delegates Gary
Reese, R-Centreville, and Jim Dillard,
R-Fairfax—no one from the Republican
establishment spoke out against them for
abandoning the Party or blamed them for the
eventual loss of two Republican seats.
Reese’s humiliating loss to Chris Craddock—a
neophyte who trounced him with 66 percent of the
primary vote—has left him emotionally
imbalanced. In repeated letters to the editors
published in the local papers he has gone out of
his way to extol the Democrat candidate, Chuck
Caputo.
At
the same time, Reese has been decrying that his
beloved Republican Party has been commandeered by
right-wing extremists. In his last letter
published in the Centreview, Reese went as far as
listing by name a number of Republican activists.
These
are some of the same activists who in prior years
had campaigned and voted for Reese. They only
turned against him when he abandoned the
Republican caucus and conspired with the
opposition party in enacting a tax increase
against the basic creed of the Republican Party.
What
makes Reese’s ramblings so ironically amusing
are his hypocritical and selective accusations of
who he terms extremists. Given the fact that even
U.S. Representatives Tom Davis and Frank Wolf held
a fundraiser for Chris Craddock, he must also
consider them to be right-wing zealots.
No
one has directly attributed the loss of the
Republican seats held by Reese and Dillard to the
leadership vacuum in the House of Delegates. Had
Speaker Howell made it clear that there would be
hell to pay for any Republican who voted with the
Democrats, the final outcomes of the 2004 tax
increase and the 2005 elections, would have been
entirely different.
Republican moderates are
lamenting the loss of a few seats in the House of
Delegates and generally blame conservative
activists. At the same time, no one is pointing
the finger to a Republican leadership that remains
muted and rudderless.
--
November 28, 2005
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