Why Virginia Republicans Haven't Won Statewide Since 2009

The Virginia GOP's Three Stooges. 

I was a member of the Virginia Beach City Committee for the Republican Party for eight years.  During that same period, I was precinct chair for the Alanton precinct, historically a Republican bastion.  I left the GOP years ago and in my resignation letter stated that I could no longer remain in a party that failed to support the concept of separation of church and state. In the years since, the stranglehold of the Christofascists - especially those mobilized by The Family Foundation, Virginia's leading hate group - has only increased.  Indeed, now the Christian right extremists have been joined by white supremacists as the second pillar of the Republican Party of Virginia.  The result?  The Virginia GOP has not won a statewide race since 2009 and one can see why if one looks at the candidates for the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate: a neo-Confederate, an unhinged (in my view) self-anointed right wing "bishop," and a largely unknown individual whose main appeal is that he isn't either of his opponents.  The Virginia GOP has become a study in insanity and with every loss, the lunatic base blames defeat on the party's candidates being "too liberal" rather than looking in the mirror and realizing that a majority of Virginians find the GOP base and its "values" frightening if not repulsive.  A piece in CNN looks at this years class of clowns and lunatics vying for the GOP Senate nomination,  Here are excerpts:

Republicans haven't won a statewide race in Virginia since 2009, and GOP leaders have all but written off their chances of changing that trend in this year's Senate race.

The state's Republicans will select their Senate candidate in Tuesday's primary.

The best-known candidate, Corey Stewart, built his brand on defending Confederate icons. Another contender is a minister who called gay people "perverted" and "very sick people" and warned that yoga leads to Satan. And a third, who has emerged as the establishment preference, is most closely aligned with Sens. Rand Paul and Mike Lee.

None, national and state Republicans admit, are likely to give Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine a serious race in November's midterm elections.

Party leaders point to Ed Gillespie's losses in the 2014 Senate race and the 2017 governor's race as primary reasons that stronger candidates didn't enter the Senate race.

"It's just a blue wave, and I think that scared some people off," said John Whitbeck, the chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia. "On paper, Tim Kaine has an incredible amount of money. You've got to have a lot of courage to take him on."

There's also the reality that allowed Democrat Ralph Northam to cruise to a 9 percentage point victory over Gillespie in the governor's race last fall: Northern Virginia's suburbs are rapidly growing and diversifying, and increasingly follow the trends of the national political landscape.

"I definitely think that we have to accept the fact that the state's changed dramatically demographically," Whitbeck said. "The issues have to be right. We need to be focused on the fiscal issues that we've always been known for."

The problem for the GOP is that none of the contenders in Tuesday's primary appear to meet those requirements.

Stewart, the chairman of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors, narrowly lost the GOP gubernatorial nomination last year to Ed Gillespie but is seen by national party leaders and strategists as an embarrassment after Stewart tied his political identity to icons of the Confederacy.

Also in the race is E.W. Jackson . . . who was the party's failed 2013 nominee for lieutenant governor.

And outside Republican groups have rallied around Nick Freitas, a little-known 38-year-old state delegate who hasn't raised enough money for his own television ads.

In the last week of the primary, Freitas also showed a new willingness to attack Stewart, making reference to his ties to Paul Nehlen, an anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim House candidate in Wisconsin, and his links to criticism of "both sides" in the wake of the Charlottesville neo-Nazi gathering and the killing of a counter-protester.

"If we are to continue our party's legacy, we must reject Corey Stewart's dog-whistling of white supremacists, anti-Semites, and racists," Freitas said in an email to supporters, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported.

Though the outcome of the primary will get attention -- and the winner could prove a headache for the party nationally and statewide for the rest of the year -- Virginia Republicans are now wrestling with the bigger problem of how they can return to competitiveness in what was until recently a swing state.

Virginia has effectively become "two one-party states," voting like New Jersey in the northern suburbs and Alabama throughout its more rural regions, and the GOP has failed to adjust to meet that new reality, said former Virginia Rep. Tom Davis, who chaired the National Republican Congressional Committee.

"They keep running Alabama candidates and Alabama campaigns, and they've just quit communicating with the northern Virginia suburbs," Davis said.

"The Republican base has migrated from the country club to the country," he said. "The problem with that is, your country club areas are the growing areas. But there's very little tolerance within the party for people who don't appeal to the country base."

Until the Christofascists and white supremacists are ejected from the Virginia GOP base, don't expect sanity to prevail - which I am sure warms the hearts of Democrats and progressives. 

A Silver Lining in Virginia's Election Results

While Republicans maintained their hold on the Virginia Senate and thus will likely block Medicaid expansion and other progressive measures proposed by Governor McAuliffe, they did not increase their overall seat count and saw loses in the House of Delegates and in other lower tier elections.  It also must be noted that since 2015 is an off year with low voter turnout, the GOP's ability to largely hold back losses does not mean that things will be rosy in the GOP bubble come next year, especially of the GOP nominates a lunatic as its standard bearer.  Over at Bearing Drift, Brian Schoeneman, one of the few sane Republicans left looks at the dark spots - that Democrats need to capitalize on - in the GOP's election results.  Here are highlights:

One of the reasons why your average voter has a tendency to hate politicians is that we often do our best to bring out the silver lining in even the darkest of storm clouds.  We will find the one or two good outcomes in a sea of bad ones and focus on those rather than on the big picture.  That’s a human tendency, especially when anybody’s job is on the line.

On the other hand, I’ve always been of the opinion that the truth is better than spin, and that as adults we should be willing to accept the bad with the good, because an unwillingness to confront things that didn’t go so well is an inherent obstacle to fixing those things the next time around.  Given that we’ve got a presidential cycle just around the corner, we need to look objectively at what happened last night in Virginia and have a long conversation about what it actually means.  So let’s throw away the posturing and be honest.

By any objective measurement, the GOP had a bad night  The only news story that most of America saw last night – the one that was blasted out by Politico, CNN and the non-Virginia news outlets – was that we held the State Senate, which threw a wrench into Governor McAuliffe’s long-term legislative plans.  Medicaid expansion is dead, as are his misguided attempts at turning guns into a political issue in a staunchly pro-gun Commonwealth. 

But what did the wins in the State Senate mean?  We maintained the status quo.  That’s it.

Maintaining the status quo in the Senate was a must win, and we won it.  But we gained no ground, and the millions poured into the Commonwealth by outside groups didn’t have an overall impact on the final outcome.  In the two races they targeted, they went 1-1.  The only people really pleased with that outcome should be the TV stations in Richmond and Northern Virginia.  On the House of Delegates side, we lost ground overall. 

Northern Virginia, however, should be concerned – our power in the House just dropped considerably.  We lost control of the House Transportation Committee and we lost two Republican seats that are now in Democratic hands, and thus marginalized.  And losing GOP incumbents in Northern Virginia before a presidential election is a bad thing – we lose the network, the lists, the activist contact with an incumbent.  All those things matter.  And now they’re gone.  

On the local level, the constant in-fighting and back-biting among different sectors of the Republican Party tore up areas that had previously been considered Republican strongholds.  . . .  Despite the feeling that this was a Republican year on the ground in Fairfax, all of our challenger candidates for Board of Supervisors lost and the open seat race in my home Sully District was a GOP loss, flipping that seat to the Democrats. 

The biggest loser of the night – by far – was the Republican Party of Virginia.  Early this morning, RPV sent out a self-congratulatory email that was long on self-praise but short on facts.  It was, if anything, an obvious attempt (and clearly pre-election results written) at turd polishing by Chairman John Whitbeck, going into this reelection campaign next year.  Despite the fact that we maintained the status quo and our messaging didn’t really work  . . . .

Whatever GOP momentum we may have built up was just released last night with a resounding “meh,” after losing a lot of races that folks thought we would do well in.  Let’s be honest – not flipping a single Senate seat Blue to Red is not momentum. As for RPV’s vaunted “Faces of the GOP” campaign – straight out of 2007’s Corporate Public Relations playbook – it was a disaster.  Of the 20 Republican races profiled, 14 of the candidates lost. 

Last night must be viewed by every Republican in Virginia as a wake up call.  The idea that we can win “base,” low-turnout off-year elections just by turning out Republicans should have died last night.  Wherever we nominated a candidate who didn’t reflect their district, we lost.  We lost two critical seats in Northern Virginia that will make next year’s presidential race harder to run.  And, most important, we saw obvious examples in Loudoun that the constant in-fighting between sections of the GOP has real world implications – and those implications are bad.  Bottom line – we had a bad night and we have a lot of work to do.

Will the Virginia GOP accept this message?  I doubt it since the Party more and more lives in an alternate universe dominated by the Christofascists, white supremacists and ignorance embracing elements  of the party base.

New Polling: Virginia GOP Increasingly Wrong on the Issues

The Virginia Republican Party has largely become a branch of The Family Foundation and similar far right Christian hate groups that seek to inflict their reactionary, anti-modernity, and hate based beliefs on all Virginians.  Thanks to gerrymandered districts, to date the Virginia GOP has been able to retain control of the House of Delegates, although those districts are undergoing a federal court challenge.  Meanwhile, most Virginians are moving forward and resisting efforts of the Virginia GOP to reimpose a 1950's society on the Commonwealth.  New polling by  Public Policy Polling shows that the Virginia GOP's position on its favorite issues - opposing Obamacare, gun control and discriminating against gays - is increasingly at odds with the views of a majority of Virginians.  The Augusta Free Press looks at the poll findings (Note the Virginia GOP support for the Confederate flag).  Here are highlights:

Republicans have had Obamacare, gun rights and gay marriage as go-to issues to use to rile up the base when necessary. It might be time to update the playbook.

New polling from Public Policy Polling shows surprising support in Virginia for the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, as Republicans styled it, trying to tie it like a weight around the neck of Democrats.

It’s a narrow plurality in the Old Dominion, 44 percent supporting the ACA to 42 percent who oppose it, but even tepid support shows that what was once a volatile issue is no more.

On a related issue, Medicaid expansion, a hot-button state-level issue in the past two General Assembly sessions, has the support of 56 percent of Virginians, with 30 percent opposed.

An overwhelming 86 percent support background checks on all gun purchases, including 84 percent of Republicans, making it clear that the background-check issue is a non-issue.

[N]ow with the U.S. Supreme Court nullifying state laws banning gay marriage, the issue has lost its oomph.   In Virginia, 73 percent of voters say the gay marriage ruling has either had a positive impact on their lives or no impact at all, with only 27 percent saying that they feel the ruling has had a negative impact on their lives.  Even a majority of Republicans – 58 percent – say that the ruling hasn’t had any sort of negative impact on their lives.

It’s doubtful that Republicans can fan the flames of discord over the Confederate flag to add to their base. Overall, just 35 percent of Virginians support flying the Confederate flag over government buildings, with 51 percent opposed.  On this issue, there is a bit of a partisan divide, with Democrats split 16 percent supporting/74 percent opposing, independents at 33 percent supporting/49 percent opposing and Republicans at 60 percent supporting/26 percent opposing.

With results like this, the question becomes one of whether the Virginia GOP will let go of the past and bigotry (and throwing the less fortunate into the gutter).  Sadly, I suspect not.  The Christofascists at The Family Foundation continue to be consumed by hatred towards Obama, hold the less fortunate in contempt, and think they have the special right to discriminate against others.

Virginia to be Presidential Battlegound Again

Virginia 2013 vote when Democrats won every statewide office

Once upon a time Virginia was so predictable in how it would vote in presidential elections that the elections in the state were almost boring.  Now, with the Republican Party increasing unable to win statewide - the urbanized areas now can out vote the extremists in the rural areas - and Obama having won the state in 2008 and 2012, things have become more interesting and tumultuous.  For political junkies, that's a good thing, even if more nerve wracking.  A piece in the Virginian Pilot looks at the coming presidential battle for Virginia.  Here are some highlights:

Virginia has so far mostly been flyover country for presidential contenders zooming between New Hampshire, South Carolina and Iowa - the early primary and caucus states in next year's election.

But it won't stay that way: Virginia is viewed as key to victory in 2016. As one of a handful of "must win" states, several in the growing field of presidential candidates are building campaigns in the Old Dominion.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz launched his bid for the Republican nomination in March at Liberty University in Lynchburg. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is the school's commencement speaker Saturday. Those appearances likely have more to do with wooing support from conservative Christians who flock to the school, founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, from around the country.

What isn't yet evident is the money that's beginning to flow and the strategies that are beginning to form as political consultants try to figure out the key to winning a state that twice voted for President Barack Obama.

Larry Sabato, a University of Virginian political scientist, stressed that it's "ridiculously early" to draw any conclusions about what might happen given the large field of [GOP] candidates. Three more Republicans entered the contest this week: former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, former high-tech executive Carly Fiorina and neurosurgeon Ben Carson.

There no sense in trying to handicap the race at this point, Sabato said, noting that the parties' primary debates begin in August. "Some of these candidates won't even make it to Iowa," he said.
Nonetheless, says Curtis Colgate, GOP chairman for the 2nd Congressional District, "Your hardcore activists are already choosing sides."

The first critical decision may come in June, when Virginia Republicans will determine what method they'll use to decide whom to back at the national convention, Colgate said. The state central committee is expected to decide whether to conduct a preference primary on March 1 - as the Democrats expect to do - or to assign their national delegates through a state convention.

The convention can be moneymaker for the state party, as presidential candidates reach out to local party groups and individuals rather than conducting broad media campaigns aimed at all voters. A convention also can give committed GOP activists more say than a primary that is open to all voters.

In the competition for the Democratic nomination, Clinton has a lock on support from top state Democrats.

Sabato, who leads U.Va.'s Center for Politics, predicted that once the parties have their nominees, Virginians can expect to see a lot of them and their surrogates during the general election.
Virginia will be one of seven states that will decide the presidency, "unless it turns into a landslide," he said.

Look for the presidential campaigns and their supporting PACs to spend considerably more in 2016 than they unloaded in 2012, when a blizzard of ads and voter outreach efforts on behalf of President Barack Obama and GOP candidate Mitt Romney blanketed the state, Sabato said. The two campaigns collectively spent roughly $2 billion.

"Believe me, if I had the cash right now, I'd invest in any TV station in Virginia," Sabato said.

Will a Civil War Break Out in the Virginia GOP?

The RPV' Base's 2013 "dream team" of extremists

Some conjecture that the Tea Party take down of Eric Cantor may be only the opening salvo of a civil war that may flare within the Republican Party of Virginia ("RPV").  Even as the Commonwealth's population trends toward more diversity and the voting power of the urban areas increase, the Christofascists and their fellows hiding under the Tea Party label are veering more and more into complete crazy land.  Some in the RVP - admitted far too few - seem to be slowly realizing that the insanity of the party base may spell the long term death knell of the party.  The spittle flecked Christofascists and Tea Party lunatics, who naturally remain detached from objective reality, in contrast claim that more "ideological purity" within the party is what will save it.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the brewing intra-party warfare.  Here are highlights:

Virginia Republicans watched and waited to see if the state party’s treasurer would resign after he publicly questioned Muslims’ contributions to society.  Some urged his ouster; others kept quiet. Finally, he agreed to step down.

The episode added to the turmoil within the state party that is making a growing number of Republicans uneasy about the GOP’s ability to elect statewide candidates or deliver Virginia for a Republican presidential candidate in 2016.

In June, a group of tea party activists, Ron Paul enthusiasts and staunch conservatives calling themselves the “conservative coalition” shocked the nation when they helped a little-known economics professor defeat former House majority leader Eric Cantor.

The fighting could come to a head Saturday when Republicans from both camps — insurgents and establishment — gather in Richmond for a meeting of the party’s governing body, the State Central Committee. The meeting comes as Democrats hold all five statewide offices and the GOP is struggling to define itself.

Officially, the committee will decide some internal issues. But unofficially, some are predicting a day-long slugfest between warring factions that haven’t faced each other since Cantor’s loss.

While a meeting full of arcane parliamentary rules might seem irrelevant to the long-term success of the party, many Republicans say the decisions of a few dozen powerful insiders will have a direct impact on the GOP’s likelihood of nominating candidates with enough mainstream appeal to win statewide elections in a changing Virginia.

Ron Butler, president of a ­direct-mail firm with ties to Cantor, was pessimistic that momentum would swing back to the establishment. “They’re acting more like the Muslim Brotherhood than the Republican Party in this country,” he said of the conservative wing of the GOP. “They scream about Eric Holder and President Obama upholding the Constitution. They’re attempting to throw their own constitution out.”

The conservative wing tried to blacklist Butler’s firm, an unprecedented move in Virginia politics that some say runs counter to the party’s free-market ideals.

With big policy issues facing the state, including Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s effort to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act and a worsening state budget shortfall, some Republicans see their internal troubles as an unhelpful distraction.

The flap about the former party treasurer began July 29, when Bob FitzSimmonds posted an inflammatory comment about Muslims on Facebook. . . . Democrats seized on the FitzSimmonds controversy to cast ­Republicans as incendiary and noninclusive. The state party specifically called on Republican U.S. Senate candidate Ed Gillespie to denounce the comments, which the Democrats called “bigoted.”

At the core of the rift is a ideological clash about how candidates are nominated for elected office. The conservative coalition prefers party-run conventions that attract the most committed, conservative activists to day-long gatherings. Moderate Republicans prefer primaries, which are open to all voters in Virginia.

Last year, conservatives in crucial party leadership positions successfully pushed for a convention — and went on to nominate candidates for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general whom Democrats, on their way to a historic sweep of all three offices, painted as too conservative.

"Too conservative" is an understatement.  Far right extremists - and in the case of Cuccinelli and Jackson, freaking insane - would be more apt.

Civil War Continues in Virginia GOP - Cantor Heckled by Christofascists/Tea Party

Just as the national Republican Party finds itself struggling with insurgent lunatics from the Christofascist/Tea Party elements, the Virginia GOP is seeing itself torn apart by these same toxic elements.  A fight in Eric Cantor's own home district highlights the problem that the growing insanity of the "godly folk" who too often are allowed to hide behind the Tea Party moniker.  That the second most powerful Republican in the House of Representatives cannot control the crazy elements in his own district speaks to the level of the swamp fever afflicting the GOP.   The Washington Post has details on the illness afflicting the Virginia GOP.  Here are some excerpts:

SHORT PUMP, VA. — Just a few miles from his family home, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) felt the wrath of the tea party Saturday, when activists in his congressional district booed and heckled the second-most powerful House Republican.

They also elected one of their own to lead Virginia’s 7th Congressional District Republican Committee, turning their back on Cantor’s choice for a post viewed as crucial by both tea party and establishment wings in determining control of the fractured state GOP.

Former lieutenant governor Bill Bolling, pushed out of last year’s governor’s race by a similar party schism, said he was “extremely disappointed” by the results of the vote, in which longtime Cantor loyalist and incumbent Linwood Cobb was unseated by tea party favorite Fred Gruber.

“Clearly, there is a battle taking place for the heart and soul of the Republican Party,” Bolling said in a statement. “While the voice of every Republican should be heard, our challenge is to figure out how to be a conservative party, without allowing the most extreme voices of the day to control our party and determine its future direction.”

Cantor appeared with his family at the event, where Republicans had packed the house. He was there in part to address his own reelection prospects. He faces David Brat, a tea-party backed opponent, in a June 10 primary that will be open to all voters in the district.

Any sign that Cantor’s support has slipped among the region’s most active Republicans could spell a tougher challenge during next month’s election. And some of the crowd’s reaction Saturday when Cantor took a shot at Brat made clear that the Republican majority leader has not yet fully shored up support.

Virginia GOP Appoints Far Right Nut as Executive Director

I frequently read the conservative Virginia blog "Bearing Drift" to know what the enemy is up to if you will.  One of the more extreme contributors to that blog is Shaun Kenney who often seems to live in an alternate universe detached from objective reality.  Under Kenney, it is safe to say that the Virginia GOP will continue its gay-baiting, anti-women, anti-modernity formula and no doubt remain an arm of the Christofascists at The Family Foundation.  All of this is good news for Democrats as most citizens  of the Commonwealth (outside of Southwest Virginia and religious extremist circles) move forward into the future.  The Washington Post noted Kenney's appointment:

The Republican Party of Virginia hired a new executive director Wednesday and announced that former attorney general and gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli II had made a $25,000 donation to boost the organization’s depleted coffers. Party Chairman Pat Mullins appointed Shaun Kenney, a veteran Virginia political operative, former party spokesman and blogger, as executive director.  


Kenney served as the party’s communications director in 2007 under then-chairman Ed Gillespie, who this year is seeking the GOP nomination to challenge U.S. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.). He has been frequent contributor to the conservative blog Bearing Drift.

Kenney takes a top job at a party eager to change its fortunes after losing the last two presidential contests and seeing Democrats sweep all three statewide offices last year.

The state GOP is also trying to overcome fundraising woes that it blames on the 2013 election cycle, which went into overtime with a recount in the attorney general’s race and several special elections. Before Cuccinelli’s donation, the state GOP had less than $70,000 in cash on hand between its state and federal accounts, compared to about $230,000 available to the Democratic Party of Virginia.

Anyone who hoped that the Virginia GOP might return to sanity should be disturbed by Kenney's appointment.

Infighting and Swamp Fever Dominate Virginia GOP

There are those who make the cry that the Republican Party can be changed from within.  It's a claim that I do not subscribe to given the manner in which the Christofascists/Tea Party crowd, white supremacist (who more often than not are one and the same as the Christofascists/Tea Party) and no tax lunatics have been allowed to infiltrate local city and county committees all across Virginia.  Of late, a few seem to finally be realizing that these folks are like a metastasizing cancer and efforts are being made to limit the ability of the extremists and outright crazy elements on local committees and at mass meetings to drive the GOP further into crazy land and/or select committee chairs and party candidates.  A nasty civil war has ensued with those trying to limit insanity being labeled as Nazis or worse.  A column in the Richmond Times Dispatch looks at the ongoing civil war.  Here are some column excerpts:

In increasingly Democratic Henrico, Republicans more often than not speak in one voice — a reminder of the control over the party apparatus by a local boy made good: Eric Cantor, the U.S. House majority leader and could-be speaker. But because of Cantor’s adversaries — his tea party primary opponent and others disdainful of Cantor’s more traditional brand of Republicanism — the latest mass meeting, to some, seemed mass confusion.

In recent weeks, this pattern has been playing out across Virginia as factions struggle for control of a Republican Party reduced to a regional presence by a string of Democratic statewide victories. The current infighting, in which Cantor loyalists figure prominently, is a preliminary to the main event in 2016: the battle for the GOP’s governing body, the central committee. It will be concurrent with the presidential race in purple Virginia.

In suburban Virginia Beach and rural Campbell and Buckingham counties, to name a few, Republicans have engaged in the parliamentary equivalent of hand-to-hand combat.

These battles — over leadership, organization and convention delegates — can be vicious. It’s because the stakes are comparatively low: dominance of local GOP committees, many of which have few members. That’s a reflection of the changing Virginia. Democrats are attracting the young, Asians and Hispanics. The Republican base is dominated by aging whites.

The internal combat is of the Republican Party’s own making. Elective Republicans openly court libertarians, home-schoolers and property rights advocates who have flooded the party since 2010. Their muscle is institutionalized by partisan gerrymandering, which forces Republicans further right, fueling partisan impasse — most recently, in Richmond, over spending and health care.

In Henrico, anti-Establishment Republicans narrowly rejected a Cantor loyalist, county GOP chairman Don Boswell, a former sheriff, to lead the mass meeting. Instead, these activists installed an interloper from Stafford County, about 60 miles north: Russ Moulton, former 1st District Republican chairman.  No friend of Cantor, Moulton has made a name for himself training tea partyers and Paulians in Republican rules and other organizational esoterica.

This way, this crowd is becoming part of the GOP fabric. But it also is a threat to comparatively mainstream Republicans such as Cantor. He favors open-to-all primaries for choosing a nominee because they minimize the right’s influence. Moulton and Co. prefer member-only conventions because they maximize it.

As Cantor’s enemies see it, naming Moulton as temporary chairman short-circuited any effort at slating and spotlighted momentum for Dave Brat, the congressman’s remaining opponent in the June primary. Further, it raises anew a nettlesome question for Cantor: If he can’t bring his party together at home, how can he do it in Washington? But then, who can?

Fred Gruber, a tea party guy from Louisa County, is running. He’s apparently not making friends by — according to Republican blogs — comparing his foes to Nazis. That’s always risky, more so when Cantor, the dominant political figure in the Henrico-anchored 7th District, is the only Jewish Republican in Congress.

This is another instance of the personal nature of Republican Party politics, and how it is magnified by the intimacy of caucuses, conventions and committees, all of which are about preserving the power of the few. Rivalries span generations. Grudges are nursed, not forgotten. Egos must be stroked.

In Virginia Beach, the Republican mass meeting was a rumble. More than 600 people were there in an Establishment drive, dependent on slating, to wrest the party from the upstarts. It may have worked.

In Buckingham, the new Republican leader is a pastor who longtime activists said they’d not heard of until he arrived at the mass meeting at the county agriculture center Wednesday.

As I have said many times, the Republican establishment created a Frankenstein monster when it allowed in the Christofascist, Tea Party and white supremacist focusing only on short term opportunity.   Now, the monster is proving difficult to kill. 

 
 

Washington, DC Wedding Reconnaissance Trip

Yesterday my partner and I drove up to Washington, DC, on a reconnaissance mission to Washington, DC, to confirm the venue for our wedding ceremony in late April as well as confirming a restaurant venue for dinner the evening before.  We plan to have our ceremony on the top terrace level of the John F. Kennedy Center followed by brunch at the Terrace Restaurant at the Center.  Weather permitting, we will have the ceremony at the corner of the terrace that overlooks the Lincoln Memorial with the Potomac River in the background and Virginia in the further background beyond the river.  The image above shows the view with my partner in the photo (yes, it was quite cold with occasional flurries in the air).  We've also picked out a great restaurant for the dinner festivity the evening before.  One thing that struck me is the reality that we will be spending a good bit of money that will help the Washington, DC, economy rather Virginia's.  And we are only one of the many couples from Hampton Roads making the trip to either Washington, DC, Maryland, New York or Delaware to marry.  Financially, Virginia and Virginia businesses are losing a great deal of money.  All because the Christofascists are trying to hold Virginia back in the 19th century.  Bigotry does indeed carry a financial price.

We stayed at our friend's townhouse in Old Town Alexandria.  After completing the fact finding mission, we had dinner in the DuPont Circle gayborhood followed by a visit to Freddie's Beach Bar and Restaurant on the Virginia side of the Potomac near Crystal City.  The place was rocking an Freddie, the owner was great as were the drinks and wait staff.  We are told that the Sunday Brunch is awesome. The bartenders were all most attractive.  As for the crowd, there were younger and older, gay and lesbian, and even a number of straight couples there to enjoy the music and fun atmosphere.  If readers are going to be in Northern Virginia and don't want to have to drive back after partying in the District, Freddie's offers a wonderful alternative.  It was great for us since we could be back in Old Town in just minutes.  We will definitely be return patrons whenever we are in Northern Virginia.

The last things that struck me from the visit were (i) how rapidly Northern Virginia is growing and how ethnically diverse it has become - all bad news for the Republican Party of Virginia and its Christofascist puppet masters.  As Virginia's urban areas grow and Northern Virginia grows, it will become harder and harder for the Virginia GOP races.   The toxic policies that the Virginia GOP is peddling are simply becoming anathema to educated and urban voters.