Myth and reality from the Virginia election

Last night’s vote brought several myths out into the open – myths that must be debunked if the Republicans are ever going to recover here; for only when these myths are put to pasture does it become clear what actually happened last night.

Myth: The era of Virginia as a Republican state is coming to an end.
Fact: The era of Virginia as a Republican state never really began. Until 1998, the Republican Party never – ever – held a legislative majority in either house. The dominant party in the first two-thirds of Virginia’s 20th century was the Democrats, buoyed by the economic conservatism and limited government policies of the Byrd machine (racial discrimination helped, but by the time that was dismantled in the legal and voting realms, African-Americans had left the Republicans for the Democrats). It wasn’t until the 1999 election that the GOP won numerical majorities in both houses, and even then the House of Delegates was still organized under a bipartisan agreement that split committee memberships and chairmanships. True Republican control of the House didn’t begin until 2002; less than a week later, Mark Warner was inaugurated.

In reality, Virginia has been a competitive state for forty years, with the Republicans doing better by and large at the Presidential level and Democrats doing better by and large at the local level. Senators, Congressional delegations, and Governors have gone back and forth over four decades. The notion of a natural Republican majority in Virginia was and always has been a fiction.

Myth: Social conservatism can no longer win elections in Virginia.
Fact: Social conservatism could never win elections in Virginia, at least not by itself. How many avowed pro-lifers have been elected Governor of Virginia since Ronald Reagan made abortion a major political issue in 1980? Answer: zero. George Allen and Jim Gilmore took partial pro-life positions, while Mark Earley – the last full-fledged pro-life nominee for Governor – lost in 2001. Now, this is not to say social conservatism has been rejected by Virginians; after all, Earley himself was elected Attorney General in 1997. However, Republicans had to be more than just social conservatives in order to win. Earley, for example, was an able attorney and a terrific candidate in 1997. Mike Farris, by contrast, hampered himself by refusing to borrow money needed to get his message out (I should note that to this day, voting for Farris for Lieutenant Governor in 1993 was the vote of which I am the most proud to have cast in my entire life).

Myth: Economic conservatism was rejected in Virginia.
Fact: Where it was on the ballot, economic conservatism was embraced in Virginia. My earlier post on this has the details, but suffice to say, Republicans who stood against higher taxes (including those endorsed by their own leadership) actually did better in 2007 than in 2005. This was especially true in northern Virginia, the GOP’s supposed electoral desert. Even in the two Hampton Roads Senate seats that the GOP lost, the anti-tax conservative (Tricia Stall) came closer to victory than the pro-tax incumbent (Nick Rerras).

Myth: Virginians are not interested in candidates opposing Democratic plans for higher spending.
Fact: Virginians couldn’t find candidates opposing Democratic plans for higher spending. The aforementioned anti-tax Republicans I mentioned were only four – out of nearly 80 Republican legislators. The remaining 70-odd voted for one or another tax increase (and yes, that includes Ken Cuccinelli – whom I still consider a squish). As for the two economic right-wingers who knocked off squish incumbents, one (Stall) nearly won, and the other (Ralph Smith in Roanoke/Salem) did win.

Myth: Northern Virginia is a Democratic bulwark that only tax-hiking Republicans can resist.
Fact: Tax-hiking Republicans went down in droves while anti-tax GOPers survived. See the two Myth-Fact pairs above.

Myth: Economic conservatism has no political support in “blue” areas.
Fact: Economic conservatism won the day in New Jersey and Oregon. These two states haven’t given electoral votes to Republicans in almost twenty years, yet New Jerseyans sent a bond issue for a sure-fire cultural lefty favorite (embryonic stem- cell research) to the bottom of the Delaware Bay, while Oregonians, when asked to enact a mini-SCHIP just like the one President Bush vetoed last month, tossed it into the Pacific Ocean. Republicans willing to talk about low taxes and limited government can win in those states. They can win in northern Virginia, too.

Myth: Next year’s Senate race is critical for the GOP.
Fact: The 2009 Governor’s race is critical for the GOP. Federal races have their own rhythm and issue set, and next year’s Senate and Presidential races will be no different. Mark Warner may be doing well now, but just wait until he has to face the fork in the road of rejecting the successful surge in Iraq or bringing down the wrath of his own base (unless the Republicans nominate Gilmore, whose own weakness on Iraq would neutralize that GOP advantage). Lest anyone forget, the Virginia Democratic Party was far healthier at the local level in the 1980s that it is today, and the Republicans still crushed them at the Presidential level.

That said, the Governor’s race may be make or break for Republicans over the next decade. Unless the party has a nominee without the blemishes of supporting a tax increase, it will lose its third gubernatorial election in a row, and could very well put the House of Delegates at risk. Meanwhile, without a reckoning on the tax issue, the GOP establishment here could be adrift for years.

This means – as much as it hurts to say it – that neither Bill Bolling nor Bob McDonnell are acceptable for 2009. We need a candidate who has not supported any of the recent tax hikes. That leaves us with the four gentlemen I mentioned here, Gilmore, George Allen, or some others I’m just not remembering right now.

Myth: The Virginia Republicans must move to the center in order to win.
Fact: The Virginia Republicans must return to the economic right in order to win. The Republican Party in Virginia has indeed lost its way, but what it has forgotten is the low-tax, limited-government philosophy that gave its opponents (the Byrd Democrats) near-total domination in Virginia for decades, but then made it competitive when the Dems abandoned the Byrd machine.

Virginia Republicans must become the party of small government and low taxes again. If not, we will continue to lose, and more to the point, we will deserve to lose.