Sen. George Allen ( R) is not a very smart man.
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| Sen. George Allen, all hat and no cattle. |
The idea of Virginia’s own Howdy Doody being elected to the presidency would be ludicrous, if the White House weren’t already occupied by a man of very similar intellectual capacity. (Note that I’m on the verge of discarding my self-imposed demand of speaking respectfully of the president by virtue of his being the president. I’m just not sure that I can do it anymore.) Allen is much like Bush in many regards — a faux country boy, with a personality, accent, and wardrobe assembled from memories of cowboy movies of his youth and practiced imitations of the genuine Virginians around him. Amazingly, people fall for it — it was Allen who ushered in the age of Republican dominance of Virginia politics in 1994.
Now there is talk of Allen running for president in ’08. He would be as much of a hood ornament as our current president, and shares similarly dangerous ideologies, or at least is willing to espouse them if they’d get him elected.
It is the duty of Virginia Democrats to prevent this from happening. We must pave the way for Gov. Warner to defeat Allen in his 2006 re-election bid, and we must work hard to ensure that Allen loses. Along with running strong candidates against every single incumbent Republican member of the House, it is the most important contribution that the state can make to restoring the balance of power in this country.
Any time that a single party has control of the White House, the House, and the Senate, it is dangerous. Add the Supreme Court to the mix, and all checks and balances are gone. The most extreme ideology wins out, and the nation suffers. In the next four years, our nation will suffer as it has not for many years. Virginia Democrats can help to cap that at four years and, in fact, cut it off at two.
I got started on this two days ago. What have you been doing?