As predicted shortly after the Virginia GOP primary in June, 2017, GOP gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie is making a hard play at prostituting himself to white nationalists and racists in the Virginia Republican Party base who voted for Corey Stewart and nearly sent Gillespie to defeat. The same effort also serves to pander to those in the Virginia GOP base who voted for Der Trumpenführer, an individual who remains highly unpopular in the vote rich urban crescent that extends from the Northern Virginia DC suburbs through Richmond and to Hampton Roads. The catch 22 for Gillespie is the reality that the more he makes himself the candidate of the white supremacist/Christian right extremists of the GOP base, the more he underscores why he is abhorrent to the vote rich urban crescent and unfit for office. A column in the Washington Post looks at Gillespie's telling efforts at self-prostitution to what I view as "white trash," Neo-fascists and open racists. Here are excerpts:
The Post reports:
Ed Gillespie hired a blunt-spoken veteran of Donald Trump’s campaign and sharpened his rhetoric on Confederate monuments in recent days, as the establishment Republican running for Virginia governor seeks to win over Trump voters.
This is as repulsive as it is predictable. The former lobbyist and former adviser to President George W. Bush had already hardened his stance on immigration to keep up with Trump Republicans. Then came his near-loss in the GOP primary to Corey A. Stewart, who beat the drum (with Morgan’s help) on the Confederate statue issue. The politically expedient move, Gillespie seems to have concluded, is to nail down his base and make certain those Stewart voters turn out in November.
Expedient does not mean smart, however. . . . . The notion that he’s really a Corey Stewart Republican — as he tries to campaign on a forward-looking economic agenda — is going to give voters whiplash.
Moreover, Republicans’ problem in Virginia in statewide races is that they are increasingly out of step with the moderate voters, white-collar workers, government employees and minorities who populate Northern Virginia counties. That population now dwarfs GOP strongholds in the southern and western parts of the state. Republican candidates who run up huge deficits in votes in Fairfax, Loudoun, Prince William and Arlington counties simply cannot make up the votes elsewhere. That’s why McDonnell was the last Republican to win a statewide race.
Now Gillespie is giving those Northern Virginia voters — Republicans included — every reason to run the other way. They do not think of themselves as sons and daughters of the South; they are socially liberal or moderate and fully engaged in the information economy. Gillespie is making himself into a political Neanderthal from their perspective.
No wonder Virginia’s state Democratic Party leaped at the chance to bash Gillespie. Kevin Donohoe, Democratic Party of Virginia spokesman, told me, “For eighteen days, Ed Gillespie has refused to condemn Donald Trump’s shameful reaction to the violence in Charlottesville. Now, Gillespie is proving just how willing he is to pander to Corey Stewart extremists by trying to fundraise off of this issue.”
This in a nutshell is the story of the GOP in Virginia and the country at large. Too afraid to oppose race-baiters and white-grievance mongers such as Trump, they adopt a “If you can’t beat them, join them” attitude. In doing so, they forfeit their own integrity and make the entire party offensive to everyone else — even to those who might embrace some of their economic positions. If Trump can turn Ed Gillespie into a Confederate flag-waver, then the GOP really has lost any claim to be the Party of Lincoln.
Just as disgusting is GOP Attorney General candidate John Adams who is vitriolically anti-LGBT, a champion of special rights for Christofascists and who has made a career out of representing extremists, the wealthy and large corporations at the expense of average citizens. Don't be fooled by Adams' feigned moderation or wearing of religion on his sleeve.
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