The Incredible, Shrinking Virginia Republican Vote

As the last two presidential elections have shown, when a majority of voters turn out at the polls, in state wide races Virginians increasingly support progressive, future facing Democrat candidates.  Part of the phenomenon is due to Virginia's changing demographics, but it is also a result of the increasing extremism of the Virginia GOP which caters more and more to far right theocratic religious extremists, anti-modernity conspiracy theorists and racist white supremacists. Many of my former GOP colleagues continue to refuse to face the reality of what the GOP has become and/or seem to now be drinking the racist/ignorance embracing/religious extremist Kool-Aid themselves.  The good news, however, is the overall GOP voter base in Virginia is shrinking.  A column in the Richmond Times Dispatch looks at the trend and the growing insanity of the Virginia GOP.  Here are column excerpts:

Scott Lingamfelter is among seven candidates for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor. Attempting to stand out in the crowded field, Lingamfelter is emphasizing his record as a state legislator. These days, that includes going toe-to-toe with a menacing threat to the free and sovereign people of Virginia: busybodies — his word — at the United Nations.

Lingamfelter, a former Army artilleryman who now lobs bombast, is thundering over Agenda 21, a voluntary U.N. program that promotes environmental protection and controls on growth. To tea party Republicans such as Lingamfelter, Agenda 21 is overreach by an unelected de facto global government.

Not to be outdone, Steve Martin, a Chesterfield County senator and one of Lingamfelter’s rivals for the nomination, is proposing a wild and crazy idea that has nothing to do with fixing roads, improving schools and expanding health care: putting the General Assembly on record against a U.N. nuclear arms treaty.

The Lingamfelter missive is a reminder that, as the big party in state government, the GOP often thinks small. It has to, if it is to retain the power that depends on shrinking voter turnouts and sharply partisan redistricting, both of which ensure that the most conservative voters, including Lingamfelter’s fellow one-world worrywarts, have the greatest influence.

In last year’s election, President Barack Obama held Virginia with just under 2 million votes. His winning territory included Lingamfelter’s Prince William County-anchored House of Delegates district. However, the eight Republican incumbents in the state’s 11-member U.S. House delegation were re-elected with a combined total of about 1.6 million votes.

Congressional lines drawn by a Republican-controlled General Assembly and approved by a Republican governor bundle Republican voters.

The pattern is repeated at the legislative level and reinforced by the GOP’s nominating process; this year, a convention. It is an insiders-only exercise that attracts a sliver of the electorate, usually those voters with the strongest feelings about the narrowest issues. Among them: Agenda 21, which the uninformed might mistake for a Manhattan nightspot for the well-organized.

In Virginia, more than 5 million people are registered to vote. The Republican convention in Richmond would be a barn-burner if it drew 10,000.

Del. Rob Bell of Albemarle, running for attorney general, may have perfected the narrow-casting that gets Republicans nominated but not necessarily elected.

Bell is again carrying the so-called Tebow bill. Defeated last year, it is named for the home-schooled pro quarterback and would allow future Tim Tebows in Virginia to do as he did in Florida: participate in public school athletics.

Bell is proposing a no-exception rule that Virginians produce a photo ID at the polls. Current voter ID laws, demanded by Republicans in Virginia and other states in the run-up to the 2012 election, allow a variety of documents and records. In Virginia, that includes utility bills.

But the new law hasn’t ended Republican fussing over alleged voter fraud, a rarity in an era of electronic voting.  Talk about busybodies.

The entire approach to the GOP's efforts to retain power while alienating more and more of the electorate is to gerrymander districts and to seek to disenfranchise as many Virginians as possible.  Welcome to democracy Virginia GOP style.