In an article written Sunday, Tyler Whitley acknowledged the intense debate between moderates and conservatives in Virginia’s Republican Party over why Jerry Kilgore lost the gubernatorial election. Quoting an “angry e-mail” by campaign manager Ken Hutcheson — calling Phil Rodokanakis with the Virginia Club for Growth a “spineless, gutless coward” — he also alluded to “a column written by Rodokanakis” that accused Hutcheson of running an unprincipled campaign.
(An aside: Note that Phil’s column appeared in the Bacon’s Rebellion e-zine, the Bacon’s Rebellion blog published Hutcheson’s letter, and much of the internal GOP debate has taken place on this blog. But Whitley did not see fit to mention us, as if the entire controversey had occurred in a vacuum. From now on, we are adopting an editorial policy of not attributing any of Whitley’s writings to a particular media outlet. He is simply “a reporter” who writes “articles.” As a courtesy to our readers, however, we will link to the source material.)
Most of the Whitley article is a rehash to anyone who has been following the debate on this blog, but he does quote Ken Hutcheson and former Gov. Jim Gilmore as making an interesting point — a point that I had not sufficiently appreciated when I criticized the Kilgore campaign the day after the election for having failed to make an issue of the “Warner/Kaine” tax increase. “Without criticizing Kilgore, [Gilmore] said the candidate ‘was in a sense a victim’ of the Republican legislators who voted for the tax increase in 2004. ‘He could have made his position [against taxes] clearer, but he was trying to hold together a party with different viewpoints.’”
Whitley also quotes Hutcheson as follows: “To make taxes the centerpiece of our campaign would draw attention to the fact that Mark Warner had peeled away a lot of Republicans, not only in the legislature, but all across Virginia. It would have been difficult for us to have maintained a good deal of Republican support and working relationships because so many colleagues and friends had supported it.” (The problem was especially acute for Hutcheson, who was close to Senate Finance Chair John Chichester, R-Northumberland, a co-architect of the tax increase.)
Indeed, Kilgore found himself between a rock and a hard place. He was put in the position of papering over a horrendous divide inside the Republican Party. Those divisions were not of his making. Indeed, there is no indication that the divisions are likely to fade any time soon. The same chasm could well confront the next Republican to run for governor four years from now.
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