The Augusta County War (Part - I’m sorry; I’ve lost count)

As expected, Larry Roller has filed his appeal to the state RPV (Yankee Philip).  Roller has also presented his account of what happened, and earned himself the wrath of much of the Valley blogosphere (Kilo, SWAC Girl, and Maxfield).

Now, this may be a shot out of right-field for most of the bloggers out there, but I see this as yet another tragic consequence of HB3202.

Lest anyone forget, in their desperate attempt to get HB3202 through, Bill Howell et al promise full support in Republican primaries for any Senator who supported the abomination.  That led 21 Republicans to vote the disaster out of the legislature.  One of those 21 is Emmett Hanger, and the rest is history.

It reminds me, oddly enough of a movie review of Star Wars: Episode III.  OK, I know that sounds weird, but bear with me.  Stephen Hunter (the Washington Postmovie critic) was talking about how Emperor Palpatine strings Anakin Skywalker along, puffing him with praise and such, until he convinces the young Jedi to compromise his principles (in fact, he killed another Jedi to save Palpatine), from which point Palpatine “owns him.”

Now, the various elected officials in Augusta County obviously killed no one, and the battle for the Augusta chair is no sci-fi film.  However, I see the same dynamic: a bunch of elected officials made a horrible deal (I’m guessing more than a few already have buyers’ remorse), but they can’t get out of it.  So now, they have to hold up their end, and try to make Emmett as secure as possible.

Of course, deals like this never hold up.  Voters have long memories, and they’re going to remember Emmett’s tax-hiking ways no matter who the unit chairman is.

Meanwhile, from outside the county, the notion of illegal meetings, unauthorized adjournments, court cases, and all the rest fade into irrelevancy.  For us, it’s the tax-hiking ciphers on one side, and the low-tax, limited-government activist to whom the party should have been listening for years on the other.

Guess which side we’re picking.