It’s Morning in America.
The thought crossed my mind yesterday as I dropped my son off at school and headed east towards home, soaking in the beauty of the semi-rural surroundings while shading my eyes from the glare of the rising sun. Sounds serene, doesn’t it?
Pardon me for borrowing Ronald Reagan’s 1984 campaign slogan, but whenever there’s a political event signaling a change in direction away from the establishment -- like what we’ve endured here in Virginia for a long time now -- it truly feels like a remarkable day. That was what Governor-elect (feels good to say that) Glenn Youngkin’s victory on Tuesday felt like to me. A new start. A breath of fresh air. A surreal cleansing of an old and dusty and dirty attic. Gaining a new conservative state chief executive while sweeping away the truly awful Terry McAuliffe at the same time, one couldn’t help but feel a little giddy and sentimental.
There were other good things from the election, too, including a new Republican Lieutenant Governor -- Winsome Sears -- who became the first African-American woman to hold that office in Virginia. Sears’ campaign poster featured the former Marine holding an “assault weapon” rifle. Now that’s my kind of politician! Sears’s wonderful acceptance speech demonstrated her fearless nature, and you sense she’s got a bright future ahead of her, not only in the Commonwealth, but maybe in the U.S. Senate someday? It’s about time someone challenged Democrat establishment senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine.
Needless to say, Sears’ immigrant rags-to-political-riches story inspires all and hopefully will create inroads into the black community for the GOP.
There were another couple Virginia triumphs that didn’t receive their national reporting due. Republicans gained seven seats in the state House of Delegates and will hold a 52-48 majority come January. With Youngkin in the governor’s chair and GOPers with power over moving legislation, there won’t be any born-alive killer abortion bills or oppressive Second Amendment-cancelling gun proposals gaining traction next year.
“Assault weapons” ban? Not in the next four years. Gun grabbers lament!
Lastly -- at least for now -- Republican Jason Miyares rode Youngkin’s coattails to a narrow win over two-term Democrat Attorney General Mark Herring. Herring, you might recall, was one of the first state officials to welcome same-sex marriages, blatantly ignoring the will of Virginia’s citizens (who had already voted no on the topic) in the process. Herring has been notoriously easy on criminals. It will be great to have the Commonwealth’s lead prosecutor actually following the law now. What a novel concept.
Again, Morning in America.
But it isn’t quite time to celebrate, at least not indefinitely. Republicans won back effective political control of Virginia (Democrats still hold the state Senate) and did much better than expected in New Jersey as well, but the win wasn’t completely satisfying. Simply put, the GOP should’ve won by more. It's more than just scoreboard, baby. Yeah, we prevailed, but if there was ever a year that conservatives and Republicans should’ve been able to run up the score, it’s this one.
There were several factors in our favor here. First, the total train wreck that is the Biden administration and the doddering, mentally-slipping president left Virginia voters in a bad mood. Then there was Terry McAuliffe himself, a man so corrupt only a liberal pundit would rate him a strong candidate. The former head of the Democrat National Committee and Bill and Hill’s best fundraising pal is the walking, lying epitome of a soulless political hack.
It was amazing to me that McAuliffe won a statewide race in the first place in 2013 and Youngkin “only” beat him by a couple points the other day. Someone I know put it artfully and accurately regarding the fibbing Democrat sleazebag: “There are so many scumbags in the Democrat party that it’s hard to squeeze them all into a top ten list, but McAuliffe has to be up there somewhere.”
Yes, he does. Saddled with Joe Biden’s foibles and the congressional Democrats’ rush to spend the United States into oblivion, one would reason that a carpetbagging awful candidate like McAuliffe would turn off anyone possessing a single brain cell of common sense. He’s indefensible, and so is the line-up of big Democrat names (Obama, senile Joe, Kamala, Stacey Abrams, among others) who paraded through the Old Dominion like General Grant’s invader Yankee army in the waning days of the Civil War.
And yet Youngkin won only within a poll’s margin of error. Hard to fathom, really. And sadly, this equals only a four-year guarantee of sane leadership in Virginia. Those four years will go by quickly, too.
Further, getting “big things” done will be difficult for Youngkin and the new Republican House majority. The Democrat state senate (21D-19R) will serve as a roadblock and place to die for many good ideas. Under Virginia’s unique electoral set-up, all 40 state senate seats will be up in two years. Will the current momentum last that long?
If he were wise, Youngkin would use this opportunity to return Virginia to its revolutionary spirit and go all-out to guarantee God-given natural rights grounded in liberty and protection of property. And don’t forget the right to life. More than anything, the people of the Commonwealth crave real leadership, someone who will stand up for the traditions that made it great to begin with, not the “woke” drivel we’ve been force-fed from McAuliffe and blackface/Klan hood Ralph Northam.
A good start would be for Youngkin to immediately outlaw vaccine mandates and make mask wearing strictly voluntary. Perhaps Youngkin should have a long conversation with Florida’s Ron DeSantis about what works and what doesn’t in COVID policy. Then he could call up the lying Anthony Fauci and tell him to go pound sand.
Are Youngkin, Sears, Miyares and the Republican House majority up to the task? We will see. The feeling of “Morning in America” won’t last long if the new leaders shrink from addressing the hard issues and taking it straight to the Democrats. Bending over to compromise on bad “moderate” legislation doesn’t win favor. Is there enough gumption to go around?
Again, a two-point win ain’t much. Virginia conservatives are glad to have it, but we should’ve won by more. There’s much work to do and this is only the beginning.
National Democrats won’t wait to find out, either. They apparently saw their party’s total capitulation in Virginia and near loss in New Jersey as a reason to speed up their huge spending boondoggles, not hold back.
“[E]ven as Democrats were processing a battering in the Virginia governor’s race and the uncomfortably close gubernatorial election in New Jersey, the White House and officials across the party pledged to forge ahead with the twin pillars of the president’s domestic agenda. Several made the case that Tuesday’s results only added to the pressure for them to do so...
“The determination to stick with the $1.75 trillion social and climate spending bill underscores just how much the Democratic Party has bet its future on Biden’s legislative priorities. And it comes right as the president’s own political tailspin has put him in a weakened position to help them sell it.
“The White House is expected to turn up the salesmanship of its plans, arguing that the results in Virginia and New Jersey, where things remained too close to call, are in part a reflection that voters want to see Congress get things done, a person close to the White House said.”
It's natural for the White House to feel this way, especially since Biden’s handlers see clues all around them that senile Joe’s presidency is unraveling before their eyes -- or maybe they’re just dozing off like the president did the other day at the international climate change summit.
If it wasn’t obvious before, it’s crystal clear now that Joe Biden will not run for reelection, so therefore, there’s major impetus to establish his legacy in 2021-22, before the midterms. Capitol Hill Democrats are correct in surmising that constituents in their states and districts won’t remember what happened in Virginia a couple days ago, but they’ll certainly recall what takes place in the swamp from here forward.
The Democrats’ window of opportunity is closing fast.
As the panic increases in the House and Senate, the Democrat nutcase fringe will shout louder and louder about “protecting people of color, women and immigrants” regardless of how the voting public views the issues. Americans don’t care about “climate change” half as much as they want government to stop making economic conditions worse. That’s a high hurdle to jump for the leftists.
Joe Biden should never have been elected president. And the Republican margin of victory in Virginia should’ve been larger, given the circumstances of our political moment in time. Conservatives and Republicans can’t afford to be complacent about knocking off a loser like Terry McAuliffe while showing up the hopelessly over-his-head Biden. It’s time to get to work defending liberty.
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