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Low Energy Ad Kicks Off Spanberger’s 2025 Gubernatorial Campaign

Long rumored and much anticipated, Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) announced her intention to run for Virginia governor in 2025 just weeks after Republicans led by Governor Glenn Youngkin fell short of re-capturing leadership of the General Assembly.

Spanberger’s announcement — being panned as “low energy” by most observers — came just days after Virginia Republicans fell a few thousand votes short of capturing the Virginia State Senate and gaining parity in the House of Delegates — with just one vote dividing both chambers:

“The greatest honor of my life has been to represent Virginians in the U.S. House. Today, I am proud to announce that I will be working hard to gain the support and trust of all Virginians to continue this service as the next Governor of Virginia,” said Spanberger. “Virginia is where I grew up, where I am raising my own family, and where I intend to build a stronger future for the next generation of Virginians. As a former CIA case officer, former federal law enforcement officer, and current Member of Congress, I have always believed in the value of public service. I look forward to serving the Seventh District through the end of this term and then pursuing the important work of bringing Virginia together to keep our Commonwealth strong.”

Meanwhile, all eyes turn towards Richmond as Mayor LeVar Stoney — former chief of staff to Governor Terry McAuliffe — is anticipated to launch his own run for the Governor’s Mansion in 2025.

The dichotomy of Spanberger — a liberal Democrat with progressive backers — running against Stoney, the progressive champion who succeeded in tearing down Confederate statues, gravesites, and memorials along Richmond’s Monument Avenue during the BLM/Antifa riots of 2020 backed by longstanding Clinton-era donors remains a key facet of the race to watch.  Should Spanberger be able to convince progressive voters with progressive dollars and messaging, will it be enough to turn off the suburbs where Spanberger has succeeded in running from Northern Virginia to Chesterfield to Fredericksburg?

Conversely, can LeVar Stoney convince liberal voters with liberal donors and messaging that the scenes America saw in Richmond just a few short months ago will not be replayed in our public schools and institutions?

One thing is for sure.  The Democrats will have gobs of cash to smashing one another in a state where Biden leads Trump convincingly — a sure lay-up should Trump re-capture the White House in 2024.

…that is, unless Virginia AG Jason Miyares or Virginia LG Winsome Sears is able to successfully put together the coalition of the future for Virginia Republicans.

The Most Diverse Ticket in Virginia History (TM) had coattails long enough to bring Youngkin in for the ride in 2021.  Should that energy continue in 2025, Virginia Republicans may be able to offer a third way within their own party strictures against a Democratic Party all too eager to outflank one another in pursuit of the impossible.

Of course, Spanberger will have a first task.  Making sure that VA-07 remains in the Democratic camp, a mission that is by no means certain according to Cook Political Report.

Then there is the “meh” problem which has helped Spanberger in the past as an anodyne candidate, but doesn’t exactly rile up anyone’s base:

Whether or not Spanberger’s middle-of-the-road persona will match the aims and desires of her progressive backers is another question altogether.  Certainly Stoney is skilled enough to show the contrast on positions he has arguably championed and led on.  Whether Spanberger can match much less find that energy remains to be seen.

 

Threats Don’t Go Well in a Small Town

Just in case you haven’t seen the music video yet, Jason Aldean’s anthem is screaming to the top of the country music charts and subsequently has been banned by CMT as “too controversial” — after the political left expressed their indignation.

Try that in a small town? White supremacy.
Try that in the hood? Just keepin’ it real…

There really isn’t a kind or delicate way of putting the problem.

One half of this country believes that violence and coercion in service to progress is acceptable; the other half of the country is tired of Lucy and the Football.

In short, folks are tired of being decent in the face of the rude and vulgar — and they are starting to draw some very clear lines.

Why?

The Problem Isn’t Both/And, It’s Action/Reaction

Imagine for a moment if Tea Party activists shut down three dozen major cities over a period of six weeks, caused billions of dollars in property damages, killed 25 people, hurt and harmed hundreds more, resulted in the arrest of 14,000 people and saw over 2,000 law enforcement personnel injured.

We wouldn’t call that a “peaceful protest” — we would call that a revolution.

Consider what has happened after Roe v. Wade was overturned. Since May 2020, there have been over 300 attacks on Catholic parishes; 59 in 2023 alone after the Catholic Church itself was targeted as a source of domestic terrorism by none other than the FBI. The pro-life movement faced 22 times as many violent attacks than abortion groups in 2022 and 70% of the caseload for the FBI.

22 to 1.

Consider January 6th when protesters interrupted the peaceful transference of power. The sheer hypocrisy of the political left when compared to how they behaved during the Kavanaugh hearings in 2018 where leftists stormed Senate office buildings and attempted to stop the Senate Judiciary Hearings?

Or imagine for a moment if President Trump engaged in a program pushed by the White House to call out his political opponents and silence them in the public square.

Anyone remember this?

It’s not Republicans doing this.

Democrats are doing this.

Want To Know Who Truly Governs? Identify Whom You Are Not Allowed to Criticize…

Yet over the last 20 years, it seems as if Republicans have conceded on a great deal:

  • the definition of marriage,
  • definitions on life,
  • definitions on gender and sexuality,
  • the slow then fast erosion of social and cultural standards,
  • violence in film and media,
  • the prevalence of abortion culture,
  • the sexualization of minors,
  • Critical Race Theory,
  • diversity training and DEI apparatchiks,
  • the corporatization of everything,
  • the Internet of Everything,
  • editing the classics of literature in order to conform to the spirit of the age in true Orwellian newspeak,
  • words you cannot use,
  • opinions you may not express,
  • the return of segregated spaces as safe spaces,
  • the fetishization of socialism,
  • the rewriting of history,
  • the iconoclasm against our monuments,
  • the grunging of America both in our workplaces and public spaces,
  • the lack of respect for the elderly where euthanasia is viewed as a duty rather than with horror.

I’ve missed a few things, I’m sure.

Democrats may point to Dobbs as a defeat, but apart from this milestone — and with the alarming rise of chemical abortion in its wake, one finds it difficult to see how the balkanization of a human rights question is a victory in and of itself — where precisely are the Democrats losing?

Preserving the March Through the Institutions Through Violence and Coercion?
The left controls five of the seven major institutions — media, entertainment, education, academia, and the bureaucracy. As a matter of policy, Obamacare is a thing now. Social Security isn’t going anywhere. Faith institutions are bending; the military and first responders remain institutionally right-leaning (but for how much longer?)

The cities have carried the day against the country. Pride gets a whole month. America is talking about race relations in a way that once was only whispered on college campuses — and Americans of every ethnicity and background continue to do well in America despite the narrative.

So total is the Democratic victory at this rate that progressives find themselves combatting — not conservatives — but their own liberal institutions as harbingers of structural racism.

Which might beg the following question: Why is the political left so apt to lean into violence to preserve their gains?

Lest we fall into the trap of whataboutism and point to instances of right wing violence, let’s remember the statistics here.

22:1.

The UK Guardian attempted to cage the problem as left-wing progress vs. right-win reaction, but the reactionaries here aren’t on the right. In fact, the numbers suggest that the predilection towards violent action in pursuit of the political remains a feature — and not a bug — of the political left, and overwhelmingly so:

One out of six US Americans? Which — if one were to transpose that number directly on the political left? That’s one out of three who are willing to opt for violence in order to “ensure members of Congress do the right thing” and “protect voting rights” — which one must admit is an extremely broad mandate.

Here’s a number that should shock you.

11.6% of Americans — let’s say, 22.6% of Demcorats? — are willing to consider violent action should Donald Trump become president of the United States again in 2024.

To restore Trump to the presidency? 6.9% of Americans are willing to enforce the popular will should it come to that.

This should raise the inevitable question as to whether the problem of violence in politics a right-wing problem at all? Or more accurately, is it a problem where the political left is willing to use extra-democratic means (i.e. violence) to preserve their 50-year march through the institutions?

Setting the New Rules for Political Engagement?
Just last week, National Review’s Kathryn Jean Lopez frowned upon the message of trying that in a small town:

There’s something remarkably and alarmingly cynical to responding to poison with more poison — which is what Aldean is doing.

. . .

Again, Aldean is right that we have our challenges. I’ve watched more robberies in stores in the past year than in my entire life. But one of the other things I’ve seen is the obvious sadness and hopelessness that people feel.

. . .

The day after Donald Trump was elected president, women at the women’s abortion march on Fifth Avenue had handwritten signs that read “#sad.” They couldn’t even be more creative than that, so forlorn were their hearts. Another day years later, a woman protested an event I was moderating. She swore at a Catholic nun who simply thanked her for being there and listening to what we had to say. She swore at me, too, and the emptiness in her eyes, I would hope, would beg Jason Aldean to write something that would bring some joy to her life. Otherwise, she is probably left with the impression that anyone who is of a more conservative point of view hates her. I don’t hate her. My Sister of Life friend doesn’t hate her. We want her to know that her life has value. Part of the reason abortion is so prevalent in America is that people don’t know what a gift their own lives are. That’s why we don’t need songs about pulling out guns to take care of problems that come from a deficit of love.

For writing this, Lopez was hammered with nothing less than vitriol and hate via Twitter (now X).

Not in drips, but in a torrent of mockery and contempt that had the detectible presence of being piled on by bots, fake accounts, and useful idiots.

From the right.

One of the complaints against conservatives over the last 20 years from either the populist or nationalist set is that despite the conservative pretense to big ideas and the noble, conservatism lost the culture war to the progressive left and their liberal allies on all the things listed above. To a fine point, they argue that if conservatism cannot stem the tide, then nationalism can — and will.

Thus we tore down anti-communist conservative fusionists such as Ronald Reagan from his pedestal and replace him with newer monuments — to Trump. Free minds, free markets, and a free society were replaced with borders, language, and culture as the mantra of the right.

Conservatives were toppled in a 10-year campaign by populist and nationalist candidates whose sole purpose was to outflank Republicans to their right, not because they could actually enact policy that would upend Democratic gains, but rather for the sole litmus test of but they fight.

Yet the end result? The left found it easier to push their agenda. More has been conceded over the last 10 years than in the previous 40 years. Yet the nationalist movement had an ace that conservatives would never (and could never) play — that being a willingness to meet the progressives on their own terms.

Violence.

Which if I could just snap off one bit of knowledge and gift it to anyone else, it is this: Violence is the failure of politics.

That’s it.

Reminds me of the old WallBuilders videos which turned the argument of political ideology on its head. The good guys weren’t on the right or the left — the good guys were those who maximized human freedom without surrendering to anarchy. The bad guys were the totalitarians — communists, fascists, authoritarians — who sought to control the human spirit. Once you see politics that way, it is hard to go back.

The same is true with the option for violence.

Once you consent to the idea that politics can be adjudicated by the argument of force rather than the force of argument? The Greeks — specifically Thucydides — called such a condition stasis or civil war. Such a condition was compared to consumption or tuberculosis, where the body politic literally began consuming itself.

Now the left may not consent to such things. They may riot in our cities, firebomb our places of worship, burn our pregnancy resource centers, and physically attack those who show up to counterprotest.

Yet there is a difference between violence and self-defense. There is a difference between a conception of violence which enforces a political ideology and a conception of self-defense in the best spirit of the Second Amendment. There is a difference between being a subject to the laws — whether that is a secular religion masked in ideology or a foreign king — and being a citizen in a free nation.

I’m not quite sure that our friends on the left understand how their equivocation and rush to excuse violence during the Summer of 2020 broke a certain understanding of America. Indeed, there seem to be two sets of rules — leftist violence is the highest form of democracy; right-wing reaction is insurrection. They impede our elected officials and call it democracy; we do likewise and it is a coup. Democrats can threaten public officials and it is merely emotion; Republicans ask why their daughters are being raped in transgendered bathrooms in public schools and they get arrested.

Try That In Your Inner City

What concerns me most is that Democrats allow themselves the methods of coercion and violence while denying the same to Republicans.

If CRT stood for Christian Reason Theory, would Democrats bend the knee?

If DEI stood for Drag Everyone Inside with the goal of holding everyone to a fair standard regardless of background, would Democrats bend the knee?

If public schools “edited out” offensive lines from books, would Democrats bend the knee?

Of course they wouldn’t. They’d fight you — physically.

…and we all know it.

Yet coercive process seems to be the exclusive province of the political left in this country. Any attempt to reform this on the right — school choice, pluralism, the Great Books — is immediately decried as Christian nationalism — the monster under the bed and a proverbial bogeyman if there ever was one.

This is the truth — indeed, the epistemic closure and lack of empathy for others — that too many Democrats refuse to want to hear about themselves. One cannot even mention it in polite society for fear of offending otherwise sensible and open-minded (to a point) Democrats.

Yet Republicans — conservatives especially — know this and for those of us who remember the conservative intellectual tradition, grow increasingly alarmed as Democrats refuse to even consider this reality. Failure to have even so much as an olive branch extended only breathes life into the nationalist reaction, that the left isn’t interested in pluralism or discussion, merely crushing dissent. Their fears? That the right might very well behave like the left.

So we are back to a truism.

Democrats can behave like Democrats, so long as Republicans do not behave like Democrats.

If that stings? Then perhaps a little bit of empathy to erode that epistemic closure is warranted. Again — imagine if the political right engaged in a Summer of 2020. What then?

Yet if that rings true? Remember that behaving like the bad guys doesn’t make you a good guy — it makes you a bad guy. That doesn’t mean the option for self-defense isn’t available, but the option for self-offense is off the table now and forever (as it was for our Founders).

Violence is the forfeiture of politics, ladies and gentlemen. That those who champion democracy opt for coercion is the very reason why the Founding Fathers hated the demos+kratia (the brute force of the mob).

We should be a lot more allergic to it than we are at present. That one half of America isn’t does not portend well.

Delegate Nick Freitas Takes House Democrats to Task on Racism: “Not This Time”

Once upon a time, a handful of media outlets could set the narrative from Richmond and the rest of us would follow. In today’s media environment, the Richmond press corps is not only starved of resources, but digital and new media outlets get to have their say in real time.

In short, the Democrats simply can’t build up their narratives fast enough anymore before Republicans can respond with their own version of events.

Not this time.

Case in point is this afternoon’s fisticuffs in the well of the Virginia House of Delegates, where House Democrats were eager to compare a Northam-era method of providing a hotline to parents in the event Critical Race Theory was being taught in the classroom — something Democrats denied even existed until Youngkin called their bluff and banned racism from the classroom by executive order.

One small problem? Governor Northam used the same method. Worse still, implicit in the criticism from Democrats is that local school boards have the right to keep parents in the dark about what is being taught in the classroom — and Delegate Kathy Byron (R-Bedford) wasted no time getting to the heart of the argument:

Governor Younkin encouraged members of the public to reach out if they have concerns about their children’s education. If children are being taught that they are responsible for the actions of their ancestors, or if they are being taught they are automatically an oppressor or that they are being automatically oppressed based on skin color, he wants to about it. He wants to know if children are being denied their rights.

. . .

When did what goes on inside a classroom become a state secret? Transparency goes hand in hand with a parent’s right to oversee the education of their children. Said simply, parents need to be able to be aware of what is being taught in the classroom.

. . .

That’s not spying, that’s democracy. That’s citizen oversight.

Yet the coup de grace came from Delegate Nick Freitas (R-Culpeper) whose fury and anger were palpable.

More importantly, it was shared by many on the Republican side of the aisle.

The moment someone actually stands up and says, “Wait a second, no. I’m not going to accept that,” if you want to debate me on the merits of our particular policies, I am happy to have that discussion. But the moment you claim — with no evidence other than we don’t agree with a particular policy position — the moment you claim that makes us sexist or racist or bigoted, Mr. Speaker, I got news. This was tried during the election cycle.

You have a lot of parents coming to their elected officials asking questions about what was going on in their schools, and the initial response was “Oh, it’s not there,” and then when they saw evidence that it was based off of what their kids were coming home and saying to them, and they went back and re-issued their concerns, they were told “Oh, well then you must be a racist.” Because that has been the repeated narrative coming from certain members on the other side of the aisle. And there’s been a lot of times where we just sat here politely and just took it.

Mr. Speaker, not this time.

I’m tired of it. My constituents are tired of it.

What kicked off this conversation? Delegate Marcus Simon (D-Fairfax) comparing the new hotline as spying, and Delegate Don Scott (D-Portsmouth) accusing House Republicans of using black bodies as a political prop:

I understand you found a winning issue, Critical Race Theory, once again using the old Southern Strategy to use race as a wedge issue, to use black bodies as a prop in your campaigns…

<<House Democrats applaud>>

…because I know when you use say that word race sometimes that makes people pay attention, and those people who have pent-up racial issues, this is something they can embrace. I ask you to be very careful about continuing to use this kind of language in an attempt to rally your base.

The line that pushed the House of Delegates over the top? Delegate Scott took direct aim at Governor Youngkin’s faith:

…the first things that I recall him saying was that he had a strong prayer life and that he was praying for everybody.

And so far, what I have seen from his Day One activities is not someone who is a man of faith, not a Christian, but someone who wants to divide the commonwealth. Someone who wants to cause division in this commonwealth; I know the truth hurts. I don’t want to make you cry like saying ‘Critical Race Theory’ because I know it hurts your feelings…

For those unfamiliar with this, this is an open violation of the rules of decorum for the House of Delegates — Rule 57 to be precise.

Before members of the chamber could leap to their feet, Speaker Todd Gilbert (R-Shenandoah) gaveled the chamber to order and reminded Delegate Scott that he could continue under proper order.

For Republicans, this should be a window into the measure and depth by which some members of the House Democrats actually believe in Critical Race Theory. They know what it is; they know what it is designed to achieve. They hope that by using the magic words of bigotry, racism, sexism will overcome reason, discernment, and charity.

Yet if the words of Freitas and Byron mean anything — and if the sentiment among House Republicans is any indicator — it is that House Democrats better get used to losing arguments.

Governor Youngkin is said to have gone this afternoon to meet with Delegate Scott in person over his comments attacking Youngkin’s faith.

We suspect this meeting will be entirely private.

Utah Rep. Burgess Owens Has Had Enough of the Soft Bigotry of Lowered Expectations

As the Virginia General Assembly kicks off and the Democrats wring their hands over how much of their woke progressive agenda they can maintain now that they don’t have Governor Northam to abuse, the question remains as to how much longer Virginia Democrats are going to chain themselves to the Critical Race Theory millstone.

In Washington, the debate over the racially charged Democratic vote rigging bill is already making national waves as Senate Democrats are rejecting President Biden’s plan wholeheartedly as a losing proposition.

Yet among House Republicans, we are seeing the seeds of revolution as minority members are taking grave offense at resistance to Biden’s plan being labeled as Jim Crow 2.0:

Unfortunately, we are hearing the same message today that we have heard over and over again from the Democrats. That minority Americans are not smart enough, not educated enough, and are incapable of following basic law of the rules to vote in elections. I am personally offended by this narrative.

Jim Crow was a policy of racial segregation imposed by Southern Democrats during the 1890s in the wake of Plessy v. Ferguson, imposing a regime of separate but equal that was upended during the Eisenhower Administration in the 1950s and resisted on a massive scale by Southern Democrats well into the 1970s — many of whom remained prominent Democratic leaders (as evidenced by former Governor Ralph Northam and former Attorney General Mark Herring).