After losing a Gubernatorial election last year and what was supposed to have been an easy-win Senate race this year, Virginia Republicans are finally starting to wonder what went wrong.
RICHMOND, Nov. 15 — Last week’s defeat of Sen. George Allen has widened the rift between moderates and conservatives in Virginia’s Republican Party, a rift that is likely to deepen at the GOP’s annual meeting early next month.
Party leaders, elected Republicans and activists in both philosophical camps have been eager to blame one another for gridlock in the General Assembly and bitter disputes in the past. Now they are also looking to explain why they keep losing elections.
“It’s cost us the governorship, and it’s cost us the Senate seat,” said Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R) of Fairfax, a leading moderate who argues that the Republican Party has ignored Northern Virginia and its growing number of Democratic voters at its own peril. “A lot of it is cultural. There is a cultural divide. You don’t [win] by continuing to run people from one region exclusively.”
Conservative Fairfax activist James Parmelee shot back that Republicans are losing because they have failed to take principled anti-tax stands, such as those championed by House Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford). “Really, the message is, be more like the House of Delegates,” Parmelee said Wednesday.
In this year’s state legislative session, the House kept a hard line on tax increases while the state Senate, also run by Republicans, sought to raise taxes to pay for transportation improvements, a key issue for Northern Virginia.
And the debate among Virginia Republicans is beginning. One one side are those who say that Allen lost because fiscal conservatism doesn’t resonate in Virginia anymore:
“There are a lot of other reasons for his defeat,” said Del. Thomas Davis Rust (R-Fairfax), a leading moderate in the House. “But his message, obviously, didn’t resonate. A continuing of the no-tax mantra is failing. Sooner or later, you have to face reality that you do have to pay for things.”
This, I think, is complete hogwash. As I noted last week, fiscal conservatism and limited government are ideas that still resonate with the public. The problem is that the public, quite rationally, no longer believed that the Republican Party really believed in these ideas. Additionally, as I argued last week, George Allen lost for reasons that have more to do with George Allen than an ideological sea change in Virginia. Much the same can be said about the ill-fated 2005 Kilgore For Governor campaign. To point to these two bad candidates running bad campaigns and deduce a trend is, I think, a huge mistake.
November 17th, 2006 at 11:09 pm
Okay, I’ll bite, and former Gov. Mark Warner?!?
November 17th, 2006 at 11:15 pm
Mimi,
What about him ?