Today is a good day for Bob McDonnell and Bill Bolling – no doubt of that. They won the endorsement of nearly every well-known Republican in the state for 2009 (Bearing Drift, Scott’s Morning Brew, and Virginia Virtucon). Still, as soon as I saw it, a cold shiver went down my spine, and nothing in the rightosphere’s reaction has made it go away.
See, over the last few years, I have seen annual attempts to “unite the Republican Party in Virginia.” They have all been followed by the same things: issue-less campaigns, lost leads, surprising (to some) defeats, recriminations, and grudges that go so deep into the next election cycle that the same people try to “bring the party together” and start the cycle all over again.
The first and most obvious of these fiascos came in 2005, when Jerry Kilgore led the state GOP ticket. The party had just been through a vicious policy battle over taxes – one which became a political battle as several tax-hiking GOP Delegates faces primary challenges. Kilgore had a choice: accept the division as a reality and pick sides, or make broad and bland “unity” statements that papered over the serious differences.
Kilgore chose the latter, and ended up with a lower percentage of the vote than any GOP nominee for Governor had earned in twenty years.
The next year, Senator George Allen faced a similar problem (albeit for different reasons), and chose the unity, issue-less approach in order to maximize Republican support for his re-election and (if he had won) 2008 presidential campaign. His attacks on Webb (involving columns and books written more than twenty years ago) fell flat, Allen stumbled, and became the first Republican to lose a U.S. Senate election in a dozen years.
Last year, a panicked GOP legislature cobbled together HB3202. Their supposed life preserver turned out to be full of cement, and the Democrats won a State Senate majority for the first time since 1991 (the 1995 election led to a 20-20 split).
One can understand why I am concerned. Of course, now that McDonnell and Bolling are the near-certain nominees, they need not follow this path. Unfortunately, they each had a role in the HB3202 debacle (however small), and many Virginians who support limited government (including the small-l libertarians who have been voting for the Democrats on social issues), will be watching to see if they repeat that mistake this summer or reverse it.
If they repeat it, they risk a Kilgore redux (hence the post title).
Now, I know to reverse the mistake of the past will be “divisive.” Numerous Republican leaders will howl and wail. Still, McDonnell and Bolling can’t possibly have it any worse than Ronald Reagain in 1980 – whose right-wing views were so strident that one of this nomination opponents – John Andersen – actually ran against him in the general election as an independent, and won nearly 7% of the vote.
However, Reagan, buoyed by his strong limited-government principles, still won 51%, carried 44 states, and his coattails gave Republicans their first U.S. Senate majority since in over a quarter-century.
It is my hope that McDonnell avoids the Kilgore model for the Reagan one. We shall see over the next year.
