The GOP Should Be Scared by Virginia

Why did the Republican Party lose so badly in Virginia yesterday?  That is a question that pundits will be bickering about for days and weeks.   But to me, the GOP loss comes down to several factors, not the least of which is the reality in the age of Der Trumpenführer is that it is becoming increasingly impossible for decent, moral people to remain Republicans.  Both in the Virginia campaign and nationally, all the Republican Party has to offer is increasingly overt racism/white nationalism, the coddling of Christian extremists, and taking from the poor and middle class to give to the wealthy.  The entire GOP platform has become the antithesis of the Gospel's social message and outside of rural and ostensibly more religious areas, people are finding the GOP's message repulsive.  Ed Gillespie tried the tax cut promise which would have bankrupted Virginia in the style of what Sam Brownback did in Kansas.  Urban Virginia voters - who shoulder the bulk of the tax burden and basically support rural areas - said "No" resoundingly.   With Danica Roem defeating Bob Marshall, the GOP's use of god, guns and gays to mobilize voters is in its death throes in Virginia.   The other notable thing about the election is the degree of dishonesty in the GOP candidates. Gillespie, John Adams, and Jill Vogel (and many of the GOP House of Delegates candidates as well) lied with abandon and at times shockingly so. Rather than garner them votes (outside of white supremacists and evangelical Christians) the open and blatant lies disgusted far larger numbers of voters.  A column in the New York Times picks up on some of this and lays out why the GOP should be very worried after their playbook went down in flames.  Here are excerpts:

Although at times over the last week it seemed that Democrats were doing their damnedest to lose the Virginia gubernatorial race, they failed miserably in that endeavor, which is to say that they succeeded emphatically at the polls. Ralph Northam will be the state’s next governor.

That’s a gigantic relief, because a Northam defeat would have prompted a Democratic meltdown — and rightly so. In statewide races, Virginia is increasingly blue: Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump there by five points a year ago. And Trump’s ceaseless assault on propriety, decency and ethical, responsible government is supposedly firing up liberals as never before. Virginia on Tuesday was the place to demonstrate that.

The demonstration was impressive. Not only did Northam beat his Republican opponent, Ed Gillespie, by about nine points . . . but Democrats also performed strongly in other Virginia races. So strongly, in fact, that one Democrat, Danica Roem, easily unseated a longtime Republican incumbent in the House of Delegates and will become the nation’s only openly transgender state representative. The history that she made flies squarely in the face of the bigotry and divisiveness that Trump sows.

Just when we needed a sign that his America is not all of America, Virginia came to the rescue and gave us a vivid one. And I guarantee you that the Republicans up for re-election in 2018 saw it, shuddered and will spend the next weeks and months trying to figure out just how much trouble their party is in and precisely how to repair it. . . . . the returns in Virginia suggested that Trump antipathy is indeed real and that it is definitely animating.

Does it mean that Democrats can wrest one chamber of Congress from Republican control in 2018? Impossible to say. . . . But there are reasons for Republicans to be very afraid.  One is that Northam outperformed Clinton without being a particularly energetic, forceful candidate. . . . . He prevailed, handily.

Republicans should also worry that they’ve oversold themselves on the moderate-progressive divide in the Democratic Party and how severely Democrats would be hobbled by it.

Late Tuesday night, as the final votes were still being counted, Democrats were poised to pick up at least 13 seats, and taking control of the House was not out of the question.

In rooting for a Gillespie victory, the G.O.P. was looking for something larger: an assurance that a Republican in a swing state or swing district could find the right recipe for energizing Trump supporters without alienating Trump skeptics.  Gillespie’s answer was . . . . he parroted the president’s tough talk about criminals and immigrants and denounced professional football players who didn’t stand for the national anthem.

Beyond the returns, this was a governor’s race that made the skin crawl, which is to say that it was a sufficiently accurate mirror and microcosm of American political culture in the Age of Trump. . . . . Northam didn’t sell out his principles nearly as thoroughly as Gillespie did, and Democrats didn’t sink to Republicans’ level. In fact one of the most audacious tricks that Republicans sought to pull off was ginning up as much outrage over a loathsome Latino Victory Fund ad that ran on television just a handful of times — it showed a truck with a Confederate flag hunting down children of color — as there was over viciously negative commercials of Gillespie’s that blanketed the airwaves. These attacks essentially branded Northam, a mild-mannered pediatrician who served in the Army, as some unhinged leftie eager to give guns to pedophiles.

Gillespie’s campaign “has not been just a dog whistle to the intolerant, racially resentful parts of the Republican base; it’s been a mating call,” wrote The Washington Post in a blistering — and wholly warranted — editorial . . . 

Before this race, Gillespie was as establishment as an establishment Republican could be . . . Until the last few months, when he utterly transformed. The impression he left on voters was an ugly one, and he and the G.O.P. have nothing to show for it. That should scare Republicans most of all.