I am not certain what it means that George Will chose to use his column in the Washington Post this morning to endorse the libertarian candidate for governor in Virginia. Robert Sarvis has some things to recommend him, surely, but he was recently excluded from a debate because he hasn’t been cracking the 10% requirement in the aggregate of recent polls.
I understand Mr. Will’s reasoning insofar as he explained it. A protest third-party vote today could condition Virginians for a successful third-party vote a few years down the line.
Still, I think it’s significant that George Will has so little regard for the Virginia Republican Party that he’s willing to cross them in this manner on the eve of the election. To be clear, even if Cuccinelli is a lost cause, there are many other offices on the ballot, including Attorney General. Encouraging Republicans not to vote for the head of the ticket could contribute to bigger losses further down the ticket, and there are a lot of people in Virginia, some of whom are undoubtedly well-known to Mr. Will, who are going to be furious with him this morning.
The way Mr. Will argued his case, his main beef appears to be Cooch’s social conservatism, particularly with regard to gay marriage. I suppose this sentiment is sincerely felt, but it does outline a significant rift in the party that is probably part of a more general rift between southern and northern Virginia Republicans.
One thing is crystal clear. Mr. Will does not think Cuccinelli will win and he therefore has no fear of angering him.
The one I’m worried about is Obenshain, the Cooch twin, for AG. He and Herring are close in the polls. Some polls show McAuliffe up by 7; one, I think, by 17. I hope it’s a wider margin than 7 to help the down tickets.
OT: I wanted to jump in an tell you how much I like your writing on things progressive and not progressive. Your a breath of fresh air at Political Animal on the weekends and sit nicely in the Kilgore/Benen/Chait camp of left leaners. Keep up the good thinking and writing!
Thank you, Jeff. I appreciate the kind words.
George Will is a columnist. He gets a free pass to anger whomever he wants. Kind of like a blogger on steroids. If he angers enough people of importance, he’ll draw notice and get syndicated ever more widely. Get enough people angry and he’ll get his own right wing radio show.
link
couldn’t happen to a nicer party.
Biden is on top of it.
Va is becoming “bi-cultural” with Southside, SW Mountain Empire and Piedmont (around Richmond) remaining conservative (with a small c) while NoVa, costal areas and educated cities centered around university districts (Charlottesville, Roanoke, etc…) are more progressive with the growing popuations. They show a burgeoning domination in national elections, and maybe statewide. The other areas will still send conservative members to State Legislature and Congress.
The “Tea Party” movement has slowed this shift, but can’t stop it. They tried to change Electoral College voting assignments but McDonald shot them down. Now, there is a push to purge voting roles with error rates of 30% in some districts. But as the Tea Party sentiment is discredited, a lot of this fooling around will fade.
Eventually Va will exhibit, on a smaller scale, the statewide political divisions seen in Upstate/downstate Ill., NY, and the like.
It kind of reminds me of Pennsylvania, with two progressive centers that are geographically separated, but which combine to overwhelm the rest of the geographical space.
Some of this split is inevitable, but the danger is for the state Dem. Party to be satisfied with the areas they control. Its possible for Democrats to make inroads in the conservative areas. They won’t vote 100% with the Calif. delegation but would be extra members in the caucus and would sit on committees as they hand out benifits. That wouldn’t be lost on people who live in Carrol, Franklin or Halifax Co. However, it would take a long term effort with the right candidates visiting the courthouses , diners, city halls of the conservative areas. Importing the usual liberal candidate from the edges of the district won’t work, and hasn’t so far.
I tried to point this out on a state Dem politial blog in 2008 (Blue Va or something) and had my posts deleted. Delicate flowers that they are, couldnt’ face reality.
Cooch was done when the Tea Party idiots fucked with defense spending. The entire blue/purple part of VA lives off that cash.
They’re only electoral hope for the future would be if the Democrats fucked up and cut defense spending more, or didn’t rush to repeal the defense side of the sequester no matter what the cost. I hope the democrats aren’t that stupid, but I wouldn’t put it past them to royally fuck up and keep the defense cuts and then raise the payroll tax cap. At which point the state will turn blood red and banning blow jobs won’t seem that bad.
So the only way to get Virginia into the blue column is to capitulate on defense in your view?
I don’t see what you mean “capitulate” here at all.
The liberal areas of Virginia are full of military bases, defense contractors, the CIA is here, and all the tech companies here that create jobs support them. If you roll back defense spending (like the Tea Party did) you bankrupt NOVA, the blue area.
It’s upper income, the richest counties in the US at that, as well. It’s also full of lobbyists and other stuff.
The Tea Party fucked up because it’s full of well educated, socially liberal, high income types who are here for good jobs relating to the defense and intelligence sectors. Culturally we don’t agree with the Christopaths. Then they tried to take people jobs with the defense cuts in the sequestor, then they shut down the government and pretty much furloughed Arlington, Fairfax, and Loundon counties. The two blue and one purple population area.
You think the Democrats going after peoples jobs (aka the defense budget) won’t send people running to whoever is going to let us keep our jobs?
I live here. It’s Boeing, Lockhead, BAE, Darpa, the Pentagon, SAIC, Booze Allen… that’s who’s employing the well educated liberals here.
Bah, still need more coffee.
The Pentagon is here, right smack in the middle of blue NOVA. That’s why it’s well educated and blue.
The real fissure widens.
Between the Reaganite, Wall Street class warriors and the Christian theocrats.
Not between the radical, by-any-means-necessary political terrorist and the “moderates” who were not ready to ACTUALLY drive the country over a cliff, as so many conservative pundits demanded.
The very name of the conservative movement has been a lie since the dawn of the Progressive Era.
Those like Will want to destroy every vestige of American social democracy and American progessivism creating a plutocrat’s paradise that never before existed in the US or elsewhere.
The Christian right wants to replace American secular government at the state and federal levels and smother American secular society with government enforcement of God’s will, as determined by the Christian (mostly Protestant) clergy of America.
Neither group has any essential sympathy for the other, theirs being a mere marriage of convenience in the Republican Party and in the media images of pols like Gingrich who denounce the two things about the real America they separately hate as if they were somehow one, what America has of secularism and what it has of socialism.
And it was the Wall Street plutocrats who held the nation hostage, recently, demanding major concessions on their agenda in return for not destroying the American and world economies.
Nothing in it for the Christians but guilt by association.
Had the nitwits behind the hostage taking included some convincing goodies for the Christian right we would not be watching as THIS fissure widens, right now.
A second thought.
Will supported the hostage taking, as did Pat Buchanan and many other long term mouthpieces and leaders of the conservative movement.
Both in fact urged the Republicans to go ahead and drive the country off a cliff and blame Obama for it, if he refused to give in.
If, like Jim DeMint, they think all means short of naked civil war fair to advance their agenda then maybe Will has just drawn the conclusion that the Wall Street Republicans can succeed even if all they control is the House, using further and relentless attacks on the government and economy of the nation.
And he may think that means they don’t need power outside the reddest of red states.
So they can do without the ground troops of the Christian right, folks they cannot do without if they aim ever again to wind the senate and/or the White House.
Hmm.
Can’t imagine why a state heavily dependent on federal spending and more than on the fringe of the Bible Belt isn’t going for the anti-government guy that isn’t into bashing gays and “lady-parts.” Interesting that Ron Paul endorsed Cuccinelli since on public policy issues, Sarvis appears to be a closer clone of Ron Paul than Rand. Could that be a bit of Paul’s long denied racism leaking out?
Could that be a bit of Paul’s long denied racism leaking out?
While I’d guess he’s probably racist my guess is he’s just being the good soldier looking ahead to 2016.
You mean looking out for the fortunes of his spawn in 2016?