Why I do not support removing Jeff Frederick (UPDATED)

The Frederick Fight (my term) has spilled over into the local blogging scene, thanks to Eric Martin.  For those who haven’t been paying attention (which is probably most of you), Ken Klinge (Tom Davis’ right hand) is calling for Frederick’s head (BD), as is Shaun Kenney (UPDATE: whoops! Shaun was just reporting the news, not agreeing with it; sorry, Shaun) and Maximus over at The Contemporary Conservative.  By contrast, BVBL and Jim Bowden would prefer Frederick stay.

I should also note there is a sidebar to this regarding Mr. Frederick’s lack of contact with the blogosphere.  Several bloggers are unhappy withe Frederick on this score (Cathouse Chat, Scott’s Morning Brew, Crystal Clear Conservative, Virginia Virtucon, Below the Beltway, and The Write Side of My Brain, Leslie Carbone, and Jason Kenney at BD).  I tend to agree with the above bloggers on this narrow issue, but outside of Jason (UPDATE: Looks like I made the same mistake regarding him as I did Shaun), I’m not sure how many of them also wish to see Frederick go.

FWIW, I, for one, do not support removing Frederick, and here’s why.

Frederick’s critics (which include many UPDATE: at least one dear friends) are citing the recent election and an admittedly very bad fundraising record over the last six months.  The Chairman will certainly need to explain the fundraising situation (although a U.S. Senate nominee who was so uninterested in his own campaign he demoralized his own blogger-in-chief might have had something to do with it), but I’m not prepared to lay blame for our election debacle here at the Chairman’s feet.  For starters, the nation underwent a net shift of nine points away from the national GOP since 2004 (and an additional two points since 2006); that’s a very difficult trend to counteract.  Moreover, Virginia wasn’t the only previously beet-red state Obama carried.  North Carolina and Indiana also went Democratic for the first time in a generation (the latter representing a 20-point shift).  New Mexico, Colorado, and Nevada all experienced double-digit gains for the Democrats.

As for the Congressional races, I would humbly submit that if Tom Davis hadn’t been burned out, he could have run again and held that seat (Frank Wolf actually increased his margin from 2006, even as Obama was carrying his district).  Now, Davis was frustrated in his Senate ambitions, but I’d have more sympathy for him if he really was the economic conservative he claimed to be (i.e., he didn’t try to get HB3202 passed in a failed attempt to save his wife’s doomed State Senate re-election campaign).  The Drake defeat was painful, but she won by a whisker in 2006, and this was – contrary to many Republican hopes – a worseyear than 2006 for House Republicans.  As for Virgil Goode’s race, well if you don’t remember the Great Blog War of 2006, I can see how you might look to Frederick as a scapegoat, but some of Frederick’s critics (especially the Kenney brothers UPDATE: see above) should know better.

Contrast all of this to 2007, when John Hager was in a similar position (in the Chair for less than a year).  Frederick’s critics have harped on the fact that Hager was never given the extended time for which Frederick is now asking.  However, the context is entirely different.  While we may not have noticed it here in Virginia, 2007 was a good year for the GOP.  Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour was re-elected; Bobby Jindal was elected Governor of Louisiana in a landslide; and Republicans made gains in the New Jersey legislature for the first time in over a decade.  The only place the party tasted defeat was in Virginia.

The reason why that happened is the main reason I am not ready to see Frederick go: the RPV’s pre-Frederick tax-hiking history.  From 2002 to 2008, the Republican Party of Virginia supported or acquiseced to tax increases on four seperate occasions, including the HB3202 debacle in 2007.  John Hager did nothing to move his party away from that history: no apology to the voters, no harsh words for Bill Howell and company to never let that happen again, no assurance to voters that it wouldn’t happen again.

Frederick, by contrast, was Chairman less than a month before Bill Howell tried again in the special session with another tax increase proposal.  Unlike Hager, Frederick called Howell out in the Washington Times, and while there were a lot of critics of Howell loudly stating their case (including yours truly), I’d be a fool to say the words of the RPV Chairman didn’t have an impact.

We cannot risk the RPV Chair being filled by someone who would be silent in the face of a Republican cave-in on taxes, or even worse, agreeing with a tax hike.  While the Democrats have been quiet for now, the yawning budget shortfall, coupled with the ongoing transportation debate, will give them every excuse they need for “revenue enhancements.”  As saw in 2007 and the first few days of this year’s special session, too many Republicans in Richmond need the shoes burned off their feet to do the right thing.  We can argue about Frederick’s ability to help turn up the heat, but he certainly won’t bring a fire extinguisher with him.

I have no such guarantee about a prospective replacement.  In fact, I don’t even know how Frederick’s critics have in mind; I’m pretty sure they don’t know.  That’s reason enough for me to be skittish.

Simply put, the Commonwealth of Virginia cannot afford a tax increase in 2009.  In my humble opinion, removing Jeff Frederick will make a tax increase more likely.

For that reason, I say keep him where he is.

Cross-posted to the Rappahannock Red

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