More love for McWaters from the Virginian-Pilot and Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling
By JR Hoeft | Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 | PoliticsTwo more endorsements rolled in today for Jeff McWaters in the Virginia 8th District State Senate GOP nomination fight between him and Virginia Beach City Councilwoman Rosemary Wilson.
The south Hampton Roads paper, the Virginian-Pilot, endorsed McWaters today.
“McWaters can’t be expected to immediately fill the void Stolle leaves, but he’s a perceptive leader who knows how to ask the right questions and has the confidence to reach his own conclusions on tough issues,” writes the Pilot.
The paper had plaudits for Wilson on her ability to govern at the local level, but claimed her campaign failed to deliver when it comes to state issues. Whereas they said that McWaters’ ability to cut waste in state spending on health care, his relationship with McDonnell and Bolling, as well as his, what they call “fuzzy”, grasp of the transportation issue is reason enough to give him the nod.
Additionally, Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling contributed to the McWaters’ campaign today by cutting an ad. Bolling praises McWaters in the ad saying:
“Our top priority is creating jobs and Jeff will be a strong addition to our team.
Jeff McWaters has experience creating jobs – he created seventeen hundred right here in Virginia Beach.
While other companies were shipping jobs overseas, Jeff refused and said “no.”
And Jeff McWaters knows how to reduce the cost of government.”
The “Firehouse Primary” is this Saturday in the 8th District from 10 a.m. – 3 p.m.
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Conservative to the core; liberal with his opinion! J.R. has been involved in politics for over a decade and has worked on several campaigns in Hampton Roads. He has served on the Executive Committee of the Republican Party of Chesapeake and the Central Committee of the Republican Party of Virginia. He is also the director of “Blogs United” in Virginia. E-mail J.R.. Follow J.R. on Twitter.
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13 Responses to "More love for McWaters from the Virginian-Pilot and Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling"
Kudos to the VA Pilot for exposing the flimsy basis for attacks on Jeff McWaters: “…a Virginia senator has almost no ability to shape a health care reform measure now wending through Congress.”
Having faced the editorial board myself, I commend Jeff for earning this important endorsement. Jeff is increasingly demonstrating his ability to communicate a positive vision for moving the Commonwealth forward!
Jason, are you really that nieve? “earning this important endorsement”, the Pilot (liberal rag) endorsement of McWaters is not a good thing. Every “true” conservative Republican in Virginia Beach knows this.
Regardless of a “state Senator” not having a part to play in a Federal take-over of health care or not, Rosemary Wilson has demonstrated true conservative governing values stating that she is against it, whereas McWaters (based on past and current statements) obviously does not.
The merits of a Pilot endorsement is certainly debatable. The real question is how will Bolling’s endorsement ring to those conservatives who will actually vote. I think there is an expected 8% turnout; and it’s logical to assume it will be those voters in VA Beach who are in tune with Republican politics. This will definitely be an interesting weekend.
I don’t care too much that a State Senator will have precious little to do with the national health care debate. What McWaters is doing is very telling about his character, and exactly what I loathe about our current state of politics.
Jeff, saying “health care reform must include mandated coverage” and that “health care is a right in America” but then claiming that you don’t support “Obamacare” or “government-controlled healthcare” is slicing it a little too thin for me. If you favor mandated health care, who’s going to manage the mechanism to ensure that all Americans comply with the mandate? Government, that’s who.
It’s kind of like saying “I really like the idea of yellow cake with a white creamy filling, but man aren’t these Twinkies awful?”
And don’t get me started on the pre-emptive negative campaign missives from the McWaters camp. “Rosemary Wilson Attacks Catholics…” is the title of the e-mail I received yesterday which decries all the ills of a negative campaign. Come on.
McWaters has some skeletons in his closet, and Rosemary has the temerity to expose them. Diversion and double-talk from Jeff don’t do any of us any good.
The idea that any republican would go anywhere near ANY candidate that EVER mentioned the phrase “mandate healthcare coverage” in a positive light is frightening, and the exact kind of person we do NOT need in the party or as an elected official. Also, as I have said before and will say again, anyone who thinks that healthcare is not a state issue, think again. Guess who is going to get to pay for this trillion dollar boondoggle, and who will decide if we go along or tell the Fed where to stick it – the state legislature, so it matters a great deal what these people think about mandated healthcare. In addition to this McWaters hangs his entire campaign on his business experience with Amerigroup, but when challenged on Tuesday by Wavy 10 to explain why the company he managed was found guilty in federal court of defrauding medicaid and not providing proper coverage to pregnant women and expensive cases he had no answer – “I didn’t see the emails.” You can’t claim your CEO experience as the reason you are qualified and then claim incompitence to the questionable activities of same said company.
I agree that the “health care is a right in America” quote from McWaters is very troubling.
Want to know what is actually a right in America? Read the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution — “The Bill of Rights.” Health care is not in there.
Wow! What great news! A VP endorsement is the kiss of death in Virginia Beach. Ask Jody Wagner. As for Bolling, perhaps it is the pay back for the deep pocket contributions McWaters showered upon him. Ya’ think?
Riley:
“Want to know what is actually a right in America? Read the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution — “The Bill of Rights.” Health care is not in there.”
Is this a joke? Guess what, the right to an education is no longer a right, the “right to life” is no longer a right,
The principle of a “right” isn’t what is/isn’t written in the Constitution. “Rights” are essentially principals the country has decided to value, not necessarily the explicit language of the Constitution.
I feel like reading verbatim from from the Constitution is essentially missing the point of it entirely. The point of the Constitution was that you SHOULDN’T be bound by what would eventually be a document pertaining to events centuries ago. The concept of self-government was designed to allow society to function flexibly and adapt to changes.
Also, Health Care actually is an undeniable right in the United States RIGHT NOW. You cannot be refused treatment from an Emergency Room in the United States. By law, you have the right to emergency treatment, and if you do not consider that to fall under “Health Care”, I’m not sure what is.
I hope we see a Jeff McWaters win on Dec. 5th. We need a voice on Richmond that can work regardless of partisan affiliation. The Virginia State Senate is known for having “across-the-aisle” leadership, and McWaters has the ability to continue that. Ken Stolle (who voted with Democrats 43% of the time) has been a leader in Richmond, and McWaters seems to be the best person to continue that (maybe that’s why Stolle endorses McWaters?).
On a side note: The very fact that Rosemary Wilson has “State Sovereignty” has an issue on her website is very laughable. I could take it serious if she did, but the section is just 1 paragraph on how she will work with McDonnell and Cuccienlli to make Virginia sovereign. Really, if you REALLY think that there is a danger of Virginia being annexed by Washington (I don’t see where you could get that notion), then you should AT LEAST be willing to outline some sort of vision for it.
Let us return to basic civics and US history, Healthcare is not a right. The Constitution doesn’t define our rights, it merely prevents the Federal government from denying our rights. Our rights come from God. This is recognized by the Declaration of Independence, our rights come from the Creator and they come to all men. The Declaration doesn’t give them either, it just recognizes that they exist are not given by men by men. It does recognize that while given to all by God, they can and often are taken away by men. Hence the need for a Constitution with a Bill of Rights to prevent the government from taking them away from us.
So what are they? They are many and are not all named, but among them is the right to life. Another is the right to liberty. Another is the right to pursue happiness.
Notice anything common about them? They all apply to us as individuals and none put a demand on anyone else’s labor. Life, free speech (which doesn’t require anyone to listen to you), freedom of religion et al are things God gives each of us and the Constitution prevents the government from taking away, but don’t force anyone else to give you anything other than to leave you alone to be a free man.
Now, if we start to create other “rights” not given to us by the Creator, but by government, that give us the right to someone else’s labor, we have slavery. When someone else has the “right” to reap the fruit of my labor (as was the case in slavery) I am no longer free. If we say someone has the “right” to healthcare it means doctors, nurses, technicians etc are compelled to give their labor to someone who hasn’t compensated them for it. They are then no longer free and that is slavery and patriots of old would have opposed it just as patriots today oppose it. (read Patrick Henry’s famous speech).
Now, the same is true in other areas: there is no right to education, healthcare, a mortgage, food, admittance to a college et al. Easy test: rights make no demands on anyone else’s labor, they are yours free and clear, a gift of the Creator. Everything else is a priviledge and we can grant those as we see fit and are willing to pay for them, but they aren’t rights.
Thanks for the reminder, Viking. This discussion of Rights makes me think back to when I endured a speaker once as she espoused the glory of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. What a laugher.
http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/
Among the best “rights”:
The right to work
The right to rest and leisure
Limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay
The right to enjoy the arts
And, perhaps the best one of all (it is difficult to choose)…”Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be GIVEN to their children”!
Oh, but then Article 29 says the UN can take away any of these aforementioned rights if you try to excercise them “contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations”! So, even if our rights are God-given, they can be U.N.-taken.
Sorry, this doesn’t have anything to do with Wilson vs. McWaters, I just figured I deserved a chuckle this morning.
Dry, (Also, very interesting discussion on Rights)
I agree with you on the fact that rights aren’t specified in the Constitution completely. I’d choose to say Humans are instilled with rights, you choose to say they are god-given, but we have the same concept there.
“Right” can be defined as privilege with the obligation of fulfillment on the part of the authority (Government, Society, God, etc.).
But I believe that size and scope of rights should be considered. Is it “Individual Rights” or “Societal Rights”. Are the two mutually exclusive?
However, getting back to “Healthcare is a right”, I agree with a statement, but I hate to put it into the words I’m about to use. All rights are not created equally. By that, I mean there are right I feel that are almost “a given” to a human, and there are rights that society should feel morally obligated to uphold. While I do not feel every human has the instilled, given right to Health Care, I believe that they have a “right” in the sense that society should feel the moral obligation to give them care.
This discussion is very philosophical, and gets extremely complicated when you throw actual money into the equation. Is “Health care is a right” something that takes away the right to make a living for people in the medical industry? Sadly those are the questions that rise up when a Health Care System is centered more on being a Business than a Service.
Bigvinu:
It is not me who said that rights come from God, that is the fundamental underpinning of the American Revolution (it is what made it really revolutionary in world history). This truth was recognized by the founders in the Declaration of Independence; “all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. Unalienable, meaning we cannot be separated from them. You might say they are ours in an ontological framework.
You see, before our revolution the dominant philosophy for millennia was called the “Divine Right of Kings”. This implied that God had granted all rights and power to the sovereign who then could give rights and privileges to whoever he chose as he chose. This led to the creation of nobility and common people. In fact in the Middle Ages serfdom was very similar to slavery. The Divine Right of Kings is where we get the idea that rights are granted to us by the government. Unfortunately, many people today (products of our government controlled education system no doubt) still believe that. It is quite frankly un-American. They haven’t been taught about our American Revolution and how it turned the world upside down by saying that in God’s eyes we are all equal and He has granted all men their rights equally. This was truly revolutionary and apparently still is today. It is the American way and was terribly threatening to Europe and its system.
But rights are just that, freely given to all men by no man with no claim on anyone else’s labor. They are strictly between us and God. And we therefore owe no gratitude for these rights to any man, but to God alone. This reality is problematic for atheists. That is why they developed Communism wherein rights can be granted by the State which is their god.
What you speak of are not rights but societal obligation. That is fundamentally different. I don’t disagree that as a society we have obligations for each other, but that doesn’t mean anyone has a “right” to our contribution. It is theirs only if we individually or collectively choose to grant them whatever it is.
So while I agree that things ought to be done, but I don’t agree that anyone has a right to them. They only have a right to their unalienable rights. This applies whether someone is a Christian or atheist or whatever.
Look, you may have surmised that like the founders, I am a Christian. And as a Christian I know that Jesus said to care for the poor, widows etc. But who did He say that to? He did not say the Roman government should, He said believers (the Church) should. He also didn’t say that anyone should be forced to give to the poor or anyone else; He always looked to us to voluntarily give. Even when it comes to faith, He doesn’t force anyone to believe, He invites: “If anyone would follow me then …”
So we need to quit referring to privileges or charity as rights and recognize that they are voluntary acts of obligation or beneficence. Further they are not the responsibility of the government but the responsibility of the community of believers (the church), and they are never to be compulsory but voluntary. So what should the government do? In my opinion it should not tax us for social programs or healthcare but do what the Constitution demands and the Founders intended. All of this other stuff that costs us so much today is quite unconstitutional. Social and other programs are the realm of the church and charities. If we want government to do anything in this area, it should make laws that make contributions to churches and organizations like the Salvation Army among others easier to do (tax deductable).
Dry Viking,
It’s a moot point to say Jesus intended for us to do good deeds voluntarily, because it is heavily implied that neglecting to do them has consequences.
Onto the other main assertion that Charities should be providing, not the Government. It goes back to an underlying theme of a social contract between the Government and the People. The Government exists to provide for and protect the people. If Government neglects in providing basic services to it’s people, it’s broken that Social Contract and no longer has a reason to exist.
Going back to Jeff McWaters’s point on “Healthcare being a right”. I don’t think we should dwell on the word “right”. If we should chose to interpret that as him meaning “social obligation”, that might make things either. Going back to the preamble to the United States Constitution (I understand the preamble carries no legal weight, but for the purposes of our discussion, it is important in talking about the role of Government), “form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, PROMOTE THE GENERAL WELFARE, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity”
I think it’s important to understand that the framework and purpose of our Government includes providing for our people, not to a degree of Socialism, in which the lower classes of civilization should be elevated to a point that self-preservation becomes non-existent, but to a certain extent. Government was created for the people, keep that in mind. That includes providing for basic needs.
Then the question becomes whether or not health-care is a basic need.
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