Time to clean house
The Republican primary is history. Sen. Emmett Hanger Jr., R-Mount Solon, is the victor. Now the real campaign begins, as Hanger faces off against two challengers in November's general election for state Senate: Crozet businessman Arin Sime, the Libertarian party candidate, and Democratic party candidate David Cox, a retired Episcopal priest from Lexington.
In the meantime, Hanger — and the majority of local Republicans who voted for him — have another, perhaps more difficult, challenge to face: dealing with the fractious, seditious leadership of the Republican committees within the 24th District who sold Hanger out. Now that their candidate, Lexington businessman Scott Sayre, has lost, an accounting must be made. Trust has been broken. Things can't just go back to normal.
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Local Republican party politics have been spinning out of control for several years now. Increasingly nasty campaigns have made a mockery of the principles and ethics of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan by embracing the tactics of Republican advertising spinmeister Scott Howell, White House wormtongue Karl Rove and the libertarian guru of slash-and-burn, Grover Norquist. Since the failed Republican gubernatorial candidacy of Jerry Kilgore through the failed senatorial campaigns of George Allen and Scott Sayre, an even more pernicious trend has emerged: Vile, abusive, truth-twisting (when outright falsehoods were not being spread) and ad hominem attacks made via cowardly, anonymous blogs run by the very people who claim to be the leaders of the local Republican party.
As if they were ever anonymous; anyone with even a nodding familiarity with local politics and blogs knows who the people are who hide behind the tawdry masks of "SWAC Girl," "General Grievous' Dog," "Elle," "John Maxfield," et al. Rather than being stand-up honest and putting their real names on their works, however, they prefer to live in a pretend world of comic book personae and blog postings that would have graced the walls of a bathroom stall in a more graceful age.
Childish blogs are but a symptom of the disease that afflicts local Republican leadership, however. The leaders of the local committees have hijacked the party, adopting extremist viewpoints and tactics and shouting down all opposition. Reason has been flung to the wind. The local Republican committee leaders were willing to throw Emmett Hanger on the ash heap and ignore every good thing he has accomplished during a 12-year career in the Senate. And why? Mainly because Hanger had the good sense not to sign Grover Norquist's no-tax pledge — unlike Scott Sayre — and the better sense not to sign onto Norquist's dictum of "trying to change the tones in the state capitals and turn them toward bitter nastiness and partisanship."
That dictum has informed every tactic, every letter, every blog post that has emanated from the Staunton, Waynesboro and Augusta County committees of the Republican party for the past several years. If it has not succeeding in winning elections, it has succeeded quite well in doing one thing: painting every Republican, no matter how moderate or thoughtfully conservative, with the same extremist brush.
It is time for the adults to seize the steering wheel from the hands of the willful children and plot a more reasonable course. It is time for local Republicans to engage in reasoned discourse and put the rancor away. That cannot happen, however, without cleaning house.
Last evening when the election results were becoming clear, those who sold Emmett Hanger down the river were putting on their smiley faces and pretending that it was all "just part of the process."
"Just kidding, Emmett! Take a joke, buddy!" they seemed to say.
Hanger and the majority of Republican voters who placed their confidence in him — along with the rest of our elected Republican officials — although Del. Chris Saxman, R-Staunton, and Del. Ben Cline, R-Rockbridge, have been conspicuously absent by their silence — shouldn't be fooled. Betrayal is a serious matter and insubordination must be dealt with swiftly. It's time to clear the underbrush of the snakes. Better yet, the snakes should resign. Today.
Opinions expressed in this feature represent the majority opinion of the newspaper's editorial board, consisting of: Roger Watson, president and publisher; David Fritz, executive editor; Cindy Corell, local editor; Jim McCloskey, editorial cartoonist; and Dennis Neal, community conversations editor.
Labels: Politics
¶ posted by The Editor 10:07 AM
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