I think of my blog as a chronicle of the fall of the Republican Party of Virginia. That’s a realization that just hit me. Since I first started blogging about politics, five years ago, that’s been the theme. It was as clear to me then as it is now that the Republican majority is probably a fluke, and that they’re on a trajectory to lose the majority by 2009. Democrats lost 25 seats after Republicans’ 2001 redistricting, but have gained about 4.3 seats annually since 2003. Just do the math: that rate gives Dems the majority in 2009. When that happens, I guess I’m just done, chronicle completed.

Anyhow, it’s with that in mind that I’ve gotten a kick out of some of the recent news from Republicans. Thursday’s Senate budget battle was unlike anything seen in the chamber for many years now. With the most collegial Republicans largely retired, and the party now in the minority there, the remaining members have the mindset of the embattled minority that they are. So they used tricks of parliamentary procedure to slow down the budget process as much as possible, promoting a budget that’s similar to House Republicans’. That might not sound interesting, except that the past budget battles weren’t between Republicans and Democrats, but between House Republicans and Senate Republicans. As Clarke Hogan told the Post, the Senate Republicans have adopted “a more conservative bent than they have.” The House is drowning, and the Senate is throwing them an anchor.

I’m likewise pleased by the news that Jeff Frederick is looking to become the new RPV chairman. (For those playing along at home, yeah, the RPV replaces its chairman, like, weekly.) Frederick is a far-right Republican, precisely the sort of guy whose positions are losing Republicans the majority.

The other night I had a chance to chat with a dozen Republican friends and newly-made Republican friends, some of whom are pretty prominent in the world of Virginia politics. To a man, they vented frustration about how far right the party has become, about how certain they are that the state is about to have two Democrats in the U.S. Senate, and how certain they are that the HoD is about to flip to Dems. They all agreed that Republicans’ continual crunch to the right is the source of this, and all anticipate vindication in the very near future. Interestingly, several actually agree with these far-right positions, but recognize that they’re just too far out of the mainstream for the party to promote. Incidentally, some of these folks are power brokers who Mark Warner is wooing, as I’d speculated would happen.

What this all reminds me of is dot coms in 2000 and 2001, many of which didn’t merely go out of business — they crashed and burned. I think there’s something inherent about a fall from great power that makes its conclusion spectacular. It’s a belief that the thing that one has done wrong (blowing your entire advertising budget on a single ad during the Superbowl, or espousing beliefs that the majority of the state’s voters oppose) isn’t actually wrong, it’s that it wasn’t done enough. These tech businesses could see on their financial projections that if they maintained their burn rate they’d be out of business in six months. So they spent more on Superbowl ads, Aeron chairs, enormous parties and free overnight shipping of a single Hello Kitty eraser, employing the converse logic of “the hair of the dog.” (Allergic to pet dander? Eat a dog!) As Republicans steadily lose the majority to Democrats who occupy the center, they lose their own members towards the center, leaving an ever-smaller group unwilling or unable to comprehend that their beliefs might not be shared by the majority of Virginians. So ever farther from the center they go, accelerating that trend and handing control of the state to Democrats.

Keep up the good work, Senate Republicans. Vote Jeff Frederick for RPV chair!

I got a robocall this afternoon from former delegate Paul Harris (he held Rob Bell’s seat for just two terms, back in the 90s, and long ago moved to Northern Virginia and took a job with Raytheon), inviting me to a “town hall” meeting at an area hotel. The event is led by Harris, Del. David Toscano, and attorney general Bob McDonnell. It’s sponsored by Americans for Prosperity.

There’s just so much about this that’s bizarre. Paul Harris? Really? Nobody’s seen him around these parts for a decade. He’s on the board of the Virginia arm of AFP, so that explains that connection. And what’s Toscano doing at an AFP event? And where does McDonnell fit in here? And why hold such a thing in Charlottesville? It’s just goofy.

Last year’s eclipse was cloudy, but the pictures actually came out better. Now I have hundreds of near-identical photos of a red-glowing moon, some shot through my tripod-mounted telephoto lens, some through my 8″ Dobsonian telescope. Why didn’t it occur to me to do something interesting, like take a wide-angle long-exposure shot and use a flashlight to make the trees all aglow? Maybe I’ll get it right in 2010.

In December of 2006 I wrote this on Richmond Sunlight:

These are all of the bills proposed for 2008. Some of these bills will pass, becoming a part of Virginia law, but the overwhelming majority will not make it. It’s kind of like sea turtles hatchlings: out of dozens and dozens of eggs, only a few make it safely past the seagulls to the water, and of those just one is likely to grow to adulthood.

That being the world’s only known sea turtle / lawmaking analogy.

And in this week’s C-Ville Weekly, in an article about Del. Rob Bell, this passage appears:

Bell compares his bills to baby sea turtles hatching on the beach. Seagulls get some and dogs others and predators in the sea many of the rest. Only a few swim away to become laws.

This may be my only lasting contribution to the Virginia legislative process. It’ll certainly be my best.

It occurs to me that the term “bullshit” has a very specific meaning when I use it, and it’s a meaning that’s surely not broadly understood. I suspect that many people see it as a mere expletive. I’m thinking of a very specific definition when I use the word. Harry Frankfurt’s essay “On Bullshit” was first published in 1986 and became an unexpected best seller in 2005. I read it at the time, and found valuable his definition of the term.

What I took away from this was my own definition of bullshit. In my view, in order to distinguish bullshit from a lie, a misrepresentation, a disagreement, etc., there are three elements that must be present:

1. The assertion must be demonstrably false.
2. The speaker must know that the assertion is false.
3. The listener must know that the assertion is false.

(This definition is notably different than Frankfurt’s. In his view, bullshit is defined not by the statement, but by the speaker. Bullshit is a statement made without regard for the truth, a result of somebody who provides information without actually knowing the truth. (This is a problem common among politicians, who are routinely called upon to give answers on topics that they are not experts on. Few are willing to admit when they don’t know something, so most will simply give an answer anyway.) Whether the statement made by the bullshitter is true or false, in Frankfurt’s view, doesn’t matter — the important thing is that the speaker simply has no idea.)

When House Republicans claimed last year, and again this year, that providing video of their floor sessions would force the legislature to become full-time, that was not necessarily a lie or bullshit. It’s true that the Senate has provided live video of their sessions for years now and it’s had no apparent effect on the length of the General Assembly session. And it’s also true that they already stream video online, but only within the General Assembly’s network, so virtually no work and very little cost would be required to provide such video. But it was possible that House Republicans believed their own claims.

Now that House Republicans are running their own video blog, their position can now be seen clearly as bullshit. House Republicans’ belief that they know best which moments that the public should have access to — no need to trouble us peons with everything — does nothing to address their simultaneous claim that providing session video to the public would reduce decorum and lengthen sessions. So we can now see clearly that their assertion is false, that they must know that their assertion is false, and, of course, that we know that the assertion is false.

Thus House Republicans’ position on providing video of sessions can be known to be bullshit.

Did you know that the state allows people to voluntarily pay more tax? It’s quite likely that you don’t — I suspect that virtually nobody knows about it. The Washington Times writes about how virtually nobody has ponied up, as evidence that nobody’s willing. I suspect that few people are willing, but without knowing that such a program exists then they’re certainly not going to give any money.

Remember when we all received those $300 tax rebate checks in 2001? I didn’t think much of those — it struck me a really poor economic policy — so I called up the IRS and asked if I could give it to them. Turns out, no. They’d just apply it to my account and end up cutting me a check, since I didn’t owe them anything. I got the same response from the Virginia Department of Taxation. Like many people I know, I ended up giving the check to a few different charities in my area. (As it turned out, they weren’t tax rebates — they were 0% interest loans from the feds, which we all had to pay for in our taxes in April 2002. D’oh.)

If the Virginia Department of Taxation doesn’t know that they have this program, how are citizens supposed to know? I’ve got a tough time seeing this program succeeding, but it’ll have a better shot if people know it exists. I’m not sure if this is the same thing as donations to the general fund, but I must note that the state lists just five donors to that program, and two of them are Republicans in the General Assembly: Sen. Nick Rerras and Del. Rob Bell.

(Via Bacon’s Rebellion)

1. explicate
2. discursive
3. paratactic
4. trope
5. quotidian

Virginia House Republicans have admitted that their arguments against releasing video of the chambers’ proceedings are total bullshit. How else to interpret their new video blog? The party has consistently argued that broadcasting House sessions would lead to grandstanding, video being taken out of context, and “a culture of viciousness that…infecting these halls,” in the words of now-retired Del. Vince Callahan (R-Fairfax). And so they’ve shut down every effort made over the years to allow Virginians see what they’re up to.

Rather than allow all video to be provided to the public, they’re simply excerpting the bits that present Republicans in the best light and Democrats in the worst light. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with a political party opposing another political party. That’s their job. No, it’s the rank hypocrisy displayed here that makes this notable.

The House Republicans’ blog is far more strident than the House Democrats’ blog. While the Democrats simply provide a few words of context and let the video speak for itself, nearly every blog entry on the the Republicans’ site levels a personal attack at a specific legislator, with accusations made in all caps with double exclamation points, the unnamed blog author describing his own claimed outrage in the first person.

Not only have House Republicans done precisely the thing that they’ve repeatedly voted against doing, but they’ve done so in a way that worsens the very thing they claimed to fear. Here’s hoping that a political reporter will look for an explanation from Del. Morgan Griffith (R-Salem). I’ll be fascinated to see how he justifies this.