Bart Hinkle over at the Richmond Times-Dispatch lowers the boom on the hard right in Virginia:
Whenever Republicans lose — and, let’s face it, they have been losing a lot lately — a certain faction of the conservative moment is sure it knows why: The candidate wasn’t conservative enough.
So went the explanation for the 2008 and 2012 elections. “The moderates have had their candidate in 2008 and they had their candidate in 2012,” one movement activist said after Barack Obama won a second term. “And they got crushed in both elections.”
One truly struggles to define Mitt Romney as a moderate. John McCain as a maverick? Okay… that we get (as recent events have demonstrated).
But the worn out idea that Republicans need to run harder to the right in order to win statewide? Seems to be unraveling rather quickly, per Hinkle’s observations:
It should be clear by now that the GOP will continue to lose so long as it keeps running crybaby beta males like these. If it wants to get tired of winning, it needs to start picking some candidates with real guts — human ones, preferably, worn around their necks like meat jewelry.
Buckley’s aphorism was to run the most conservative candidate who can win. Gillespie — to his credit — earned the second most votes ever for a gubernatorial nominee in the history of Virginia, beat only by the candidate who turned out the largest number of votes in a gubernatorial race: Ralph Northam.
The idea of going to the presidential election and turning to that pool to find voters who activate once every four years? For the Democrats, may have seen some validation, as anti-Trump voters came out in droves to send a message to the Republican Party.
Yet the open lament from GOP consultants that they simply don’t know what to do to attract voters under the age of 40 is horrific. Millennials tend to be socially libertarian, but fiscally moderate — precisely the opposite message of would-be reformers preaching fiscal libertarianism and social moderation.
Of course, who in their right mind would run for public office today on the right? A coterie of consultants and media pundits make a living pushing people further and further to the right, as the grassroots throw money at those who validate their ideological value as true believers.
Meanwhile, the establishment (so-called) is caught between a double vise of Dixiecrats, nationalists, and populists on the right while fending off the liberals, progressives, and Antifa left seeking to either make government the solution to every problem or literally upend the system in absolute abandonment of any constitutional principle whatsoever.
In 2002, conservatives baptized the Dixiecrats, populists, and nationalists in the waters of patriotism in order to forge a constituency that would fight the global war on terrorism, fusing all the success of 1994 with a post-9/11 national sentiment. Anti-war liberals and libertarians were deemed unpatriotic scumbags… and when the backlash came in 2006 and followed up again in 2008, Republicans did not learn the lesson. In fact, Republicans doubled down on what worked in the past, both in 2010 and 2014 by sending congressional majorities to Washington.
Is it any small wonder why a mainstream conservative — Romney, Gillespie, Rubio — would be deemed as insufficiently orthodox? Or why Trump, who cares little for what people think and bears a relentless focus on results, would be successful against Hillary Clinton — literally the epitome of everything middle America despised about Washington elites and the Democratic Party.
As the good ol’ Overton Window continues to move further and further to the extreme poles of the American electorate, two things emerge: (1) the horseshoe theory where tactics merge but ideologies diverge will occur, and there will be conflict, and (2) the opportunity for a viable center will emerge to settle that impulse back down. 1787, 1865, 1945… every four generations, America does this (usually after one side or the other emerges victorious: patriots over Tories, Union over South, FDR over totalitarianism).
In Virginia, we see this impulse made manifest for more than a few reasons. We’re a growing and changing commonwealth, the eastern part of the state sharing different values than the western part. Half of Virginians were not “born here” but rather came here from different parts of the nation or the world. September 11th happened here (Pentagon). We have a sizable population of veterans who have settled in Virginia and called it home. Changing economies have hit western Virginia hard. Rural localities are shrinking; urban localities are growing. The economist Joseph Schumpeter called this process “creative destruction” — and it has proven to be far more destructive than creative in many regards for voters who feel as if they are held in utter disdain by a liberal elite who feel as if they can hold others in contempt, as if they are a sainted and more enlightened orthodoxy than the one prior — the coalition of the ascendant vs. the forgotten man.
Until conservatives understand the angst of the Trump voter, they are never going to be able to understand why voters would turn to a man they might not like personally, but who at the very least they believe is fighting for them. Until populists understand that conservatives value the world differently and that not everything established is to be torn down? Conservatives will continue to fold their arms.
Let’s not forget the small army of agitators — paid consultants, really — who make a small fortune off of running hopeless candidates, forcing incumbents to unload hundreds of thousands of dollars fend them off. Literally a win-win for all those concerned, save the challenger who finds themselves tens of thousands of dollars in debt to the overpriced and underqualified. Every coffee and lunch I buy, it’s the same questions… and the same lament (always after the fact) — we didn’t know, we should have listened, but we were told…
…and it’s only truly about two dozen in Virginia who do this. Blame the pushers, not the users — right? Of course, the pushers will point towards recent nomination victories and near victories over the last four years… but the only successful succession — Rep. Dave Brat — remains a singular outlier. Everywhere else — literally everywhere else — these so-called insurgencies falter and stumble to no discernible purpose (other than paying a few fees and salaries for a short time).
Meanwhile, the Democrats continue to come over the wall. This isn’t to say that some incumbents don’t deserve a shake or two — many do, and the honest ones will say as such. But the resources wasted that could otherwise be spent on building a grassroots infrastructure in Virginia? Boggles the mind… and the Democrats have assiduously been plowing in their resources into such a media and grassroots apparatus for 11 years running now.
…and Republicans wonder why we get beat?
Yet make no mistake, the left has their problems, though the old Byrd Machine still functions according to purpose despite progressive agitation to the contrary. Progressives and liberals are at sixes and sevens in Virginia — and nowhere is that more evident than with the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and the agitators employed to keep energy prices high (see: Russian interference).
The short version is quite simple. Republicans need to see the game for what it is. The Democrats don’t care if you are a conservative or Trump supporter — they are coming for us all. If there was one piece of advice that would improve our fortunes dramatically? Stay in your lane and pick a fight against the left back home.
The resources burnt fighting one another? Could be put to so much better use pushing back against the left. If we don’t figure this out soon, we might very well be squabbling over the ashes of a permanent political minority.
