My political blogging, since 2003, has largely been about how the Republican Party is Virginia is crashing and burning. Their coming demise was obvious even then, back when they controlled just about everything—the house, the senate, our congressional delegation, and both U.S. Senate seats. To an outsider, I might appear something close to psychic, but to my fellow denizens of state politics, this has all been pretty obvious. As I’ve written, Virginia Republicans will always choose wrongly. Not wrong in hindsight, but wrong like should I pick up some dinner on the way home, or drive off a bridge? They always make the wrong choice, and that costs them at the ballot box every year.
The RPV had their ass handed to them this week, plain and simple. Jeff Frederick is the DPVA’s MVP right now. We knew he’d be a train wreck for the RPV, and he’s delivered in spades. With Virgil Goode’s defeat, Democrats now control our congressional delegate, both U.S. Senate seats, and the senate. There’s really no question that we’ll take the house next November, not now that Frederick is the RPV chair. The nomination of Gilmore and election of Jeff Frederick telegraphed a pretty clear message to many Republicans that their party had left them, that it was OK to vote for Mark Warner and maybe start thinking of themselves as an independent, rather than a Republican.
What does Jeff Frederick have to say for himself? In the latest RPV newsletter he offers this: “Heck, by any standard, we should have lost by double digits.” As far as he’s concerned, he’s been a big success, because “Democrats fell far short of the 25 seat gain in Congress and filibuster proof majority in the Senate they expected.” (He doesn’t mention that, on his watch, Virginia lost three seats in the House and one in the Senate.) Frederick labeled Obama a “hard-left socialist” one week ago, but today trumpets that it’s his conservative financial proposals that allowed him to win. At no point does he acknowledge his responsibility for the party’s failure, acknowledge his embarrassing feud with the McCain campaign, or indicate that any lessons have been learned. Delightfully, he shows that he’s learned precisely the wrong lesson, such as in this bit about Sarah Palin:
So it comes as no surprise that the scapegoaters are trying to lay Tuesday’s loss at her feet. What does come as a surprise is how openly some Republicans are jumping right in. Maybe I’m naïve, but I thought by now we Republicans would have learned our lesson and stopped giving gifts to the liberals to win their approval by going after our own.
Many don’t realize that the reason the liberals went after her so hard is exactly because she is an effective politician that threatens the turf they think only they should occupy.
The fact remains that Sarah Palin performed amazingly well given all the pressure she endured as she stepped from her Wasilla, Alaska home into the brightest of national spotlights. She is one of the few shining stars in a Party desperate for a little charisma and new faces. Sarah Palin is not going away any time soon — and thank goodness for that!
That’s the sort of talk that makes my heart soar like a hawk.
What I have to wonder is whether there are any adults left in the Republican Party of Virginia who can muscle Frederick out of his position and take the reins. They’re facing a minimum of a half-decade in the wilderness (I’m invoking the dead-hooker-or-a-live-boy rule here, of course, as is always implicit), though I suspect it’s something closer to permanent, to the extent to which anything in politics is permanent. The tiny base that’s willing to support this foolishness combined with the state’s demographic shifts may well ensure that.
Actually, it appears the GOP lost THREE House seats on his watch.
Thank you, Josh, you’re right, of course. I’d stopped thinking of the Connelly/Fimian race as even vaguely competitive, and accepted that as a Democratic seat just as soon as Tom Davis announced his resignation. I’ve modified this blog entry to indicate three seats, rather than two.
Palin was a disaster on two major counts: First, she drove away voters who actually take the office of Vice President seriously and who expect a proven leader to be rewarded with that position on the ticket. The obvious (and unifying) choice was Romney, but of course, McCain just couldn’t resist giving the finger to the Republican base (and to Romney).
Second, “trailer-park Palin” seemed to draw out from under every rock, the most bigoted, xenophobic fringe elements of our society.
This fringe element is obnoxiously still present in the Republican propaganda blogs, and was at the polls on Election Day. When I would hand these sorts a Democratic ballot-guide, the common response was muttering of racial epithets, various spitting and cursing fits and the occasional inbred who would call me a race-traitor under their breath.
The whole experience allowed me to see the Republican side in a new light. While I still have many good, Republican neighbors who do not share the xenophobic core beliefs of the Religious Reich and their bigoted allies, I witnessed so much rude and hateful behavior by so many members of the Republican side, that it made one think that our forefathers would have been embarrassed to call those people, Virginians.
Perhaps the most entertaining aspect of this LANDSLIDE, is that the Neo-Fascists who parrot the GOP talking points on their propaganda blogs remain clueless that, thanks to Bush and that gimmick, Palin, Americans no longer trust the Republican Party to lead. The GOP mouthpieces still rant in terms of, “You are either with us, or you are a terrorist.” Meanwhile, Americans have left the Republican Party so quickly and in such large numbers, there is a real possibility that without a significant change of course, the GOP will pass into history within the next four major election cycles.
The Republicans can’t legitimately blame Jeff Frederick. He has only held the Chairman job since the Convention and had no control over who the candidates were. Bad President, bad economy and handing over too much control at the national level to Neo-fascists and too much control in Virginia to the Religious Reich, have doomed the Republican Party, unless the GOP leadership makes a concerted effort to get back to the libertarian roots of the Republican Party and begin again to campaign on real solutions, rather than relying on the politics of fear.
Millions of middle-aged, working class, White Men, were driven away from the Republican side (due to the lack of ideas and the gimmick “trophy veep”) and they voted for Barack Obama. The question that now arises is, will the Democratic Party finally end its war on White Men and welcome these working class millions back, or will this be a one time event, leaving the working class White Men as a major swing vote segment that shall remain in play for future elections?
I’d love to be able to disagree point-by-point with you, Waldo, but, alas, you’re pretty much spot-on about this. That there’s even one R in Virginia who thinks the lesson learned is to draw the wagons tighter and forsake the middle of the electorate would seem sheer lunacy. But that they number in the dozens, many on State Central, is some kind of mass dementia. The R structures have been controlled for several years by political children, and not the nicest or brightest kids at that. Having found that there are electoral awards to be gained without the slightest expenditure of thought, altruism, or public interest considerations, they have descended into nothing but empty phrases that have no meaning in delivering solid governance to the voters. The jig was pretty much up a few years ago (the KIlgore/Kaine and Bolling/Byrne races were the classic telltales, the latter not because the R lost, but because someone so unabashedly un-Virginian as Leslie Byrne nearly won). But the RPV has made it clear that it is afraid of quality in its candidates, afraid of the voters, afraid of really addressing public policy issues, and afraid of the only legitimate end-product of politics – quality governance for all the people. Frederick is a cartoon distillation of all of those retreating dynamics. In fairness, he can’t be saddled with the results at the polls – he was too new to have influenced much of that – but he is emblematic of the low level of leadership that activist Virginia Rs tend to lurch toward when given a chance. A few of us grown-ups with an hour’s planning could probably shake things up considerably, but those of us who know how things work, and how to run businesses, or teach, or command a squad/platoon/company/regiment/brigade/division, or fly a plane or drive a boat are finding rewards in doing those things and can’t quite discern the advantage of jumping into the sandbox. Besides, the ambience is so goofy, that our wives and families would wonder if we’d gone barmy trying to impose order and maturity on so dysfunctional an organization as RPV.
Well, a few bright spots: the voters in the 5th rid us of a terrible embarrassment and cleared the way for rebuilding a positive image there. It’s almost beyond belief that Virgil could pull off that scam for so long without huge pushback from decent Republicans. Maybe some of them will come out of the bomb shelters now and start to live again. Thelma Drake’s loss is not such a bad thing either. I have no reason to believe she wasn’t a nice lady, but I’m not sure she had any particular credentials to be a Member of Congress. If the Republicans of Virginia can put that kind of candidate behind them and start recruiting the quality people that are all around (surely the 5th has tens of thousands of citizens who are better qualified than Goode to be in Congress), we’ll come back. If your boys and girls overreach on the national level in their exuberance and start throttling the economy with heavy-handed taxation and protectionist trade policies, by 2010, there’ll be a respectable backlash in our favor. As for 2009 in Virginia, if I were Kaine, I’d ask for a late pick-up on my ambassadorship or cabinet post so that Bill Bolling becomes Governor ’round about April or May, thereby throwing the planned GOP succession into a cocked hat. And I do suspect that the House of Delegates has a very good chance of going Democratic. And then Jeff Frederick will tell everyone that it was a great accomplishment that it did not go more Democratic and that the solution is to embrace conservative values and lose by even more the next cycle. God help us.
I do think you’re right about that, and that’s something that I hadn’t considered. If you’re lucky, Gilmore will now go wherever Goode will go (away, anyhow), and gradually a more reasonable bunch will take over.
The fact is that it’s fun to be the minority opposition. It’s easy to get a seat at the table, it’s not hard to be influential, and there’s always a sense of purpose and the knowledge that things can only improve. It’s been great fun being on the ride up for the Democratic Party in Virginia, and I’m not sure it’ll be all that interesting simply running the show. (Because, of course, I don’t “run the show” in any sense. I’m just a blogger.) I think there could be some exciting times ahead for thoughtful, honest, level-headed Republicans.
Waldo, excellent analysis as always. It has been amusing to listen to Republicans talk about where they went wrong and how they need to focus more on “conservative” issues and family values. It is clear that the core of the party doesn’t get it and that is why I, once a solid Republican, am an Independent. The people running the party, like Frederick, seem to have forgotten that traditional conservative values meant smaller government, fiscal responsibility, and strong foreign policy. Traditional conservatives didn’t care what you did in the privacy of your own home, in fact they didn’t want to know. Today’s Republican party can seem to hold a conversation with the American people that doesn’t touch on the three G’s as if these three issues had anything to do with the problems facing America today. The lesson from losing? We didn’t harp enough on the the three G’s…
Looks like I will be stuck voting D for awhile…
There were so many good lines in that movie. I’ll add another relative to Tuesday’s blowout – from Dustin Hoffman’s character to Faye Dunaway’s; “You ain’t the Reverend Ms’Pendrake, you’re the whore Ms’ Lulu Belle.”
You forgot to blame Jeff for the losses in Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina. Surely, if you give him the credit for all of these defeats in Virginia that tracked with the national trends, then you might as well also give him credit for all those losses elsewhere too.
If the same losses would have happened, no matter the RPV chair, then why did Frederick unseat Hager with the promise of stemming the bleeding? Why not elect a scarecrow?
Maybe Frederick’s someone else’s scarecrow, and he’s just not in on the joke.
Wow. The fact that we have two conservatives who, while agreeing with you and separating themselves from the RPV extremists, talk about the Democratic Party’s “war on White Men” and Leslie Byrne being “un-Virginian,” really illustrates just how far Republicans here have to go before being anywhere close to mainstream.