How Virginia Republicans Are Working to Elect Tim Kaine

Increasingly, today's Republicans seem to live in a bubble that keeps them from living in the same world as the rest of us.  Such is particularly the case in Virginia where the Republican Party of Virginia and GOP members of the General Assembly grovel and do the bidding of Victoria Cobb at The Family Foundation as if she were some sort of controlling dominatrix.   As a piece in the New York Times notes, perhaps such servile behavior and allegiance to some of the most extreme elements in Virginia may be about to bite the Virginia GOP in the ass as their far right batshitery helps elect Tim Kaine and defeat George Allen.  What's also telling is that Allen - a former law school classmate of mine - in typical behavior for him hasn't bothered to educate himself as to what some of The Family Foundation backed laws and regulations translate to in reality.  Here some highlights from the Times piece:

Last December, toward the end of an early debate between the Senate candidates in Virginia, George Allen was clearly ill at ease.  .  .  .  . Kaine was in the midst of attacking proposed federal legislation of Allen’s, which declares that life begins at conception. Kaine pointed out that it would make many forms of contraception illegal:

The way a birth control pill works is often to stop a fertilized egg’s embryo from implanting in a woman’s uterus.

Allen’s “personhood” legislation, Kaine said, would

criminalize women’s right to make their own reproductive decisions. That is an intrusive, big government way of coming at a problem that is just exactly the kind of problem that government really can’t solve and shouldn’t be trying to solve.

Kaine’s line of argument appeared to catch Allen off guard.  .  .  .  .   The moderator intervened: “About the contraception question, could you tell us how do you think birth control pills and intrauterine devices work?”

 

Moderator: “Don’t they work by preventing implantation of a fertilized egg?”  Allen: “Well, if the egg is not fertilized there is not conception.”   Fortunately for Allen, the conversation shifted to other subjects.

In February, the Virginia State Senate passed an informed consent law requiring that women seeking an abortion first undergo transvaginal ultrasound, a highly controversial procedure. The reaction in many quarters of Virginia and in the country at large was voiced in an editorial in the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot on Feb. 3:

Inserting something into the vagina of an unwilling woman is a violation in every sense of the word. But not to a majority of Virginia’s Senate.

“In a scarcely veiled effort to make abortion impossible,” the newspaper added, “21 senators used the power of government to do something grotesque.”

Kaine, a social and cultural liberal, who in almost all public polls has now taken a modest lead, has benefitted from the actions of the Republican majority in the both houses of the General Assembly. 

They are not the only Republicans unintentionally helping him. He has also profited from the behavior of Virginia’s Republican governor, Bob McDonnell — who was about to sign the transvaginal probe legislation into law when it blew up into a national issue — and the rulings of Kenneth Thomas “Ken” Cuccinelli II, the Republican state Attorney General. 

The Senate race here has become a testing ground for how far social conservatives can push their agenda — and continue to win elections — in a rapidly changing southern state with a burgeoning population of college-educated voters as well as many more ethnically diverse voters. The controversies in Virginia reflect the potentially explosive political consequences when the more abstract anti-abortion (and anti-gay marriage) provisions of the 2012 Republican Party platform are translated into concrete policies at the state and local level. While Republicans have been successful in recent years across the South, cultural and demographic trends here in Virginia suggest they may be pushing the outer limits.

There is a self-evident truth in contemporary politics: any constituency angered, threatened or fearful of the way the state exercises power is motivated to turn out to vote. The converse rule is: voter turnout declines among those groups whose goals and agendas are protected by those in power.  In Virginia, this means that social liberals are strongly motivated to go to the polls on Nov. 6 to express their opposition to policies supported by Republican state officials.

If Allen loses, it will be a national setback to the anti-tax wing of the Republican Party and a defeat for the Christian right. Both groups will be emboldened if he wins. In other words, the outcome of Kaine vs. Allen will reverberate far beyond Virginia’s borders.

I sincerely hope George Allen goes down to defeat.  He is precisely the type of unthinking puppet to the far right extremists that we do NOT need in the U.S. Senate.