Have Virginia Democrats Learned the Lessons of November 2nd?
By Jason Johnson | Saturday, November 27th, 2010 | PoliticsOnce the smoke cleared from this month’s midterm elections, analysts declared “Fire Pelosi” to be the most effective slogan of the 2010 campaign, and rightly so: Nancy Pelosi, and the apologetically liberal agenda she pushed through the U.S. House of Representatives, was so unpopular that her party lost 62 seats in the chamber. One would think that such an electoral rebuke would prompt introspection on the part of national Democrats; one, however, would be wrong; House Democrats voted overwhelmingly to make Pelosi their caucus’ leader in the 112th Congress. If national Democrats are unable—or unwilling—to acknowledge the reasons they lost control of the House, who will learn the lessons of November 2nd? The answer might be found in southern and western Virginia.
The election of Robert Hurt and Morgan Griffith to the U.S. House of Representatives opened two seats in Virginia’s General Assembly that will be filled by a special election on January 11. Republicans have nominated exceptionally strong candidates in both races, Bill Stanley and Greg Habeeb, respectively. Yet while the 19th state Senate district and the 8th House of Delegates district are reliably Republican, local Democrats have nominated candidates for each seat that are portraying themselves as polar opposites of Nancy Pelosi. In Morgan Griffith’s Salem-based 8th House District, Democrats nominated well-known Roanoke entrepreneur Ginger Mumpower. Until 2007, Mumpower owned a successful chain of jewelry stores throughout the Roanoke Valley, frequently appearing in television commercials for her stores. In an interview with Roanoke’s conservative talk radio station AM 960 WFIR, Mumpower, touting her experiences as a small-business owner and former local government official, pledged to promote a pro-growth, anti-regulation agenda in Richmond. Meanwhile on the Southside, Democrats nominated Pittsylvania County Supervisor Hank Davis to run for the Senate seat vacated by Robert Hurt., Davis, who has represented the county’s overwhelmingly Republican Chatham-Blairs District for over a decade, describes himself as a “pro-life, pro-gun, pro-business” Democrat.
So in two special elections to be held in two red districts, Democrats have nominated candidates significantly to the right of their national party’s leadership and who claim positions strikingly similar to those of their Republican opponents. While I do not yet know enough about Ginger Mumpower or Hank Davis to question the sincerity of their supposed conservatism, I must question the motives of Virginia Democrats. By nominating “conservative Democrats” Mumpower and Davis, have Virginia’s Democrats truly repudiated the Obama-Pelosi agenda that cost them Representatives Nye, Perriello and Boucher, or are they merely attempting to pull a bait-and-switch on western Virginia voters? Furthermore, if voters in the 8th House and 19th Senate Districts want conservative representation in Richmond, why would they cast a faith-based vote for “Republican-lite” candidates—who happen to be members of Nancy Pelosi’s Democratic Party—when they could elect known conservatives, like Greg Habeeb and Bill Stanley?
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A lifelong political junkie, Jason caught the political bug as a fifth grader after meeting George Allen in 1993. Since then he has studied political science at both the undergraduate and graduate level. When not perusing the blogs or volunteering for conservative Republicans, Jason enjoys cheering on his beloved Virginia Tech Hokies and spending time at his Bedford County home.
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17 Responses to "Have Virginia Democrats Learned the Lessons of November 2nd?"
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“Pro-life, pro-business, pro-gun” Democrat?
Is he going to take a “no new taxes” pledge, too?
Is he even going to caucus with Democrats, because with pledges like that, he sure won’t be voting with them.
That’s a good question. Earlier this month, Sen. Saslaw was ready for the Senate Democratic caucus to forfeit this seat (that was before Hank Davis announced his candidacy). I haven’t yet heard if the caucus has changed its mind, but you’re right: IF Davis is sincere and IF he is elected, he won’t find much common ground with his fellow Senate Democrats.
The Democrat party is no longer the party of JFK, Truman or Roosevelt. From the time LBJ took office their party has been in a graveyard dive even when they won major elections. There are a growing number of younger honest to goodness decent dems who can’t take it anymore and are actively making inroads to take their party back from the elder liberals in the same vein that younger republicans are making inroads to take back the gop from elder rinos.
Zell Miller democrats, & I was one of them, are fed up with the liberals who hijacked the democrat party and made off with Americas booty. The current dem leadership, like a number of their gop opposition, is so enamored with spin doctoring everything they say that is impossible for them to elevate honesty and integrity high enough to take center stage and therein lies an opportunity for younger dems to go prospecting for their futures in public office.. The recent blood letting of the dems means there is an opening for conservadems and the elder libs know that and see the writing on the wall.
From the 2004 gop convention Speech given by Zell Miller..
Since I last stood in this spot, a whole new generation of the Miller Family has been born: Four great grandchildren.
Along with all the other members of our close-knit family — they are my and Shirley’s most precious possessions.
And I know that’s how you feel about your family also.
Like you, I think of their future, the promises and the perils they will face.
Like you, I believe that the next four years will determine what kind of world they will grow up in.
And like you, I ask which leader is it today that has the vision, the willpower and, yes, the backbone to best protect my family?
The clear answer to that question has placed me in this hall with you tonight. For my family is more important than my party.
There is but one man to whom I am willing to entrust their future and that man’s name is
George Bush.
In the summer of 1940, I was an eight-year-old boy living in a remote little Appalachian valley.
Our country was not yet at war but even we children knew that there were some crazy men across the ocean who would kill us if they could.
President Roosevelt, in his speech that summer, told America “all private plans, all private lives, have been in a sense repealed by an overriding public danger.”
In 1940 Wendell Wilkie was the Republican nominee.
And there is no better example of someone repealing their “private plans” than this good man.
He gave Roosevelt the critical support he needed for a peacetime draft, an unpopular idea at the time.
And he made it clear that he would rather lose the election than make national security a partisan campaign issue.
Shortly before Wilkie died he told a friend, that if he could write his own epitaph and had to choose between “here lies a president” or “here lies one who contributed to saving freedom”, he would prefer the latter.
Where are such statesmen today?
Where is the bi-partisanship in this country when we need it most?
Now, while young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrat’s manic obsession to bring down our Commander-in-Chief.
What has happened to the party I’ve spent my life working in?
I can remember when Democrats believed that it was the duty of America to fight for freedom over tyranny.
It was Democratic President Harry Truman who pushed the Red Army out of Iran, who came to the aid of Greece when Communists threatened to overthrow it, who stared down the Soviet blockade of West Berlin by flying in supplies and saving the city.
Time after time in our history, in the face of great danger, Democrats and Republicans worked together to ensure that freedom would not falter. But not today.
Motivated more by partisan politics than by national security, today’s Democratic leaders see America as an occupier, not a liberator.
And nothing makes this Marine madder than someone calling American troops occupiers rather than liberators.
Tell that to the one-half of Europe that was freed because Franklin Roosevelt led an army of liberators, not occupiers.
Tell that to the lower half of the Korean Peninsula that is free because Dwight Eisenhower commanded an army of liberators, not occupiers.
Tell that to the half a billion men, women and children who are free today from the Baltics to the Crimea, from Poland to Siberia, because Ronald Reagan rebuilt a military of liberators, not occupiers.
Never in the history of the world has any soldier sacrificed more for the freedom and liberty of total strangers than the American soldier. And, our soldiers don’t just give freedom abroad, they preserve it for us here at home.
For it has been said so truthfully that it is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press.
It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the agitator, who has given us the freedom to protest.
It is the soldier who salutes the flag, serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag who gives that protester the freedom to abuse and burn that flag.
No one should dare to even think about being the Commander in Chief of this country if he doesn’t believe with all his heart that our soldiers are liberators abroad and defenders of freedom at home.
But don’t waste your breath telling that to the leaders of my party today. In their warped way of thinking America is the problem, not the solution.
They don’t believe there is any real danger in the world except that which America brings upon itself through our clumsy and misguided foreign policy.
It is not their patriotism – it is their judgment that has been so sorely lacking. They claimed Carter’s pacifism would lead to peace.
They were wrong.
They claimed Reagan’s defense buildup would lead to war.
They were wrong.
And, no pair has been more wrong, more loudly, more often than the two Senators from Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry.
Together, Kennedy/Kerry have opposed the very weapons system that won the Cold War and that is now winning the War on Terror.
Listing all the weapon systems that Senator Kerry tried his best to shut down sounds like an auctioneer selling off our national security but Americans need to know the facts.
The B-1 bomber, that Senator Kerry opposed, dropped 40% of the bombs in the first six months of Operation Enduring Freedom.
The B-2 bomber, that Senator Kerry opposed, delivered air strikes against the Taliban in Afghanistan and Hussein’s command post in Iraq.
The F-14A Tomcats, that Senator Kerry opposed, shot down Khadifi’s Libyan MIGs over the Gulf of Sidra. The modernized F-14D, that Senator Kerry opposed, delivered missile strikes against Tora Bora.
The Apache helicopter, that Senator Kerry opposed, took out those Republican Guard tanks in Kuwait in the Gulf War. The F-15 Eagles, that Senator Kerry opposed, flew cover over our Nation’s Capital and this very city after 9/11.
I could go on and on and on: Against the Patriot Missile that shot down Saddam Hussein’s scud missiles over Israel, Against the Aegis air-defense cruiser, Against the Strategic Defense Initiative, Against the Trident missile, against, against, against.
This is the man who wants to be the Commander in Chief of our U.S. Armed Forces?
U.S. forces armed with what? Spitballs?
Twenty years of votes can tell you much more about a man than twenty weeks of campaign rhetoric.
Campaign talk tells people who you want them to think you are. How you vote tells people who you really are deep inside.
Senator Kerry has made it clear that he would use military force only if approved by the United Nations.
Kerry would let Paris decide when America needs defending. I want Bush to decide.
John Kerry, who says he doesn’t like outsourcing, wants to outsource our national security.
That’s the most dangerous outsourcing of all. This politician wants to be leader of the free world.
Free for how long?
For more than twenty years, on every one of the great issues of freedom and security, John Kerry has been more wrong, more weak and more wobbly than any other national figure. As a war protestor, Kerry blamed our military.
As a Senator, he voted to weaken our military. And nothing shows that more sadly and more clearly than his vote this year to deny protective armor for our troops in harms way, far-away.
George Bush understands that we need new strategies to meet new threats.
John Kerry wants to re-fight yesterday’s war. George Bush believes we have to fight today’s war and be ready for tomorrow’s challenges. George Bush is committed to providing the kind of forces it takes to root out terrorists.
No matter what spider hole they may hide in or what rock they crawl under.
George Bush wants to grab terrorists by the throat and not let them go to get a better grip.
From John Kerry, they get a “yes-no-maybe” bowl of mush that can only encourage our enemies and confuse our friends.
I first got to know George Bush when we served as governors together. I admire this man.
I am moved by the respect he shows the First Lady, his unabashed love for his parents and his daughters, and the fact that he is unashamed of his belief that God is not indifferent to America.
I can identify with someone who has lived that line in “Amazing Grace,” “Was blind, but now I see,” and I like the fact that he’s the same man on Saturday night that he is on Sunday morning.
He is not a slick talker but he is a straight shooter and, where I come from, deeds mean a lot more than words.
I have knocked on the door of this man’s soul and found someone home, a God-fearing man with a good heart and a spine of tempered steel.
The man I trust to protect my most precious possession: my family.
This election will change forever the course of history, and that’s not any history. It’s our family’s history.
The only question is how. The answer lies with each of us. And, like many generations before us, we’ve got some hard choosing to do.
Right now the world just cannot afford an indecisive America. Fainthearted, self-indulgence will put at risk all we care about in this world.
In this hour of danger our President has had the courage to stand up. And this Democrat is proud to stand up with him.
Thank you.
God Bless this great country and God Bless George W. Bush.
Seems to me the Democrats are offering some Virginia voters candidates who are not afraid of challenging the Tea Party. Perhaps if they ran as Republicans they would be called RINO’s and they would never win the primary.
Well if you Republicans want to kick all the moderates out of your party, we Democrats will be proud to accept their votes and their candidates willing to run for office*.
* Some in the Democratic Party are unhappy about having to share their party with moderates. If they want to win elections, they need to learn how to share.
If Dems would just stop with the baloney, I might respect them, political differences aside.
Since when have Dems “been afraid to challenge the Tea Party”?? For the past 2 years Dems and their accomplices have routinely smeared and attacked the Tea Party.
If RINOS stayed consistent to that “pro-life, pro-gun, pro-business” message they wouldn’t be called RINOS duh. Is the national Dem party prepared to embrace that message and implement it? Ha ha.
Dems did Nothing to welcome moderate voters; they did everything they could to turn them off and attack them. Witness Pelosi’s disdain for the lapdogs in the House. Remember Pelosi Hoyer and Reid calling any opposition to Obamacare unAmerican? Dems are elitists and ideologues.
Dems aren’t unhappy to share their party with any useful idiot who will vote for the gangster socialist program. If the useful idiots don’t vote reliably then the Dems get the state controlled media to attack them. They share nothing except the loot from the Federal treasury.
I do agree that Repubs need to call the lapdogs’ bluff more effectively. And like Mr Cohen I would support real conservatives in the Dem party. I just don’t think they can stay in that party as currently constituted.
@LittleDavid. The Dems would happily embrace moderates? Are you kidding? My self-described “liberal granny bitch” in Indiana was actually delighted to see the party purged of those horrible blue dogs. I guess she had to take solace in SOMETHING after Nov 2nd.
As a moderate Democratic leaning Independent, I too question whether the more liberal Dems are really welcoming moderates. It seems more and more like they are saying primary the blue dogs, etc. Of course it varies by state, but overall the trend of both parties is to becomes more ideologically “pure.” Honestly as a moderate, I feel less and less welcome in the Democratic Party, and do not think that I would be welcome in the Republican Party.
SE VA MWC Alum, Welcome to the Tea Party. Prior or current party affiliation is no vice.
There’s nothing new here, really. Both those districts are rural, pretty good Republican districts. Virginia Dems always nominate more conservative candidates in those areas, it they want a chance at winning. (Sometimes the party leadership has given up on a seat and liberal will run, pretty much on their own, and get 25-30% of the vote). If you look at the Democrats from out that way now, Deeds, Armstrong, Reynolds, Edwards…they are to the right of the party norm.
valentius,
Let me take up just one aspect of the argument and that is the pro-life one.
I had three kids, all of them wanted, and the only reason I did not have more is because my wife and I exercised birth control. How many kids are in your family?
My extremely pro-life father had nearly a dozen kids following him into the pew on Sunday due the absence of birth control. How about you? How about all the politicians screaming pro-life in your face? My father lived it and ended up with nearly a dozen. How many do you have? According the the pro-life crowd, it is not just abortion that is a sin, but you are not even allowed to use a condom for birth control.
I will note that the Pope has recently moderated his stance regarding the use of condoms. Still not allowed for birth control, only allowed for decreasing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.
Turbo-Honestly I dont think my views would be acceptable to the Tea Party either, but I do appreciate the invite. The Tea Party is however another party with which I sometimes agree.
SE VA: Yeah, you said you were a moderate, I’m not sure the Tea Party has the welcome mat out for those. At least that’s the impression you’d get from their attitude on “compromise.”
SE VA, what are your issues and where do you stand on them? Where do you have the most problems with the current make up of the Democrats? Where do you differ strongly with the Republicans and Tea Party?
@Little David
Leftists make a career out of taking one statement out of a page, twisting it and then condemning their own twisted version. Read the post please. I was taking issue with your strange claim that a self proclaimed pro life pro guns pro business Dem would be called a RINO if they were a Republican. I made no other statement about it. So your whole post is meaningless.
@SE VA,
You are no friend of the gangster socialists it seems and that’s all that matters to me.
WikiLeaks. Perhaps that is a subject that should be discussed.
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