Your essential reading of the day comes from Chris Beer at Mason Conservative. The subject is Bill Bolling and how he neatly fits within Virginia’s generally corporatist, Harry Byrd-influenced political history — and how Ken Cuccinelli represents a fundamental break with that narrative. While I urge you to read the piece in full, here’s a snip:
In many ways, what motivates the base of Democratic support that twice elected Barack Obama, Tim Kaine, and Mark Warner in Virginia is the same energy that is moving Republicans to Ken Cuccinelli. Ken isn’t just running on low taxes and abortion. He is focusing his campaign as redefining conservatism as a force that will help the poor, help business, and revolutionize the state. The real political struggle isn’t left versus right in America or Virginia; it’s the powerful versus the powerless. Cuccinelli is running on issues like eminent domain; prison reform, sex-trafficking, federal mandates, mental health reform, market-based transportation solutions, and a willingness to take on the powerful in both parties. The Bolling Dixiecrats are attacking Ken the sway way they all have attacked him. He’s extreme, dangerous, too right wing, and inflexible. Bolling wants to run on what all Dixiecrats ran on . . . doing what’s best for big business. The fact is, Ken Cuccinelli has gotten more done working with the other side than Bill Bolling ever has. The problem is he just has never done it when it came to raising our taxes. The powerful interest in the Democratic Party and Republican Party don’t care about the regular folks, they just want more money (and thus power) to remain centralized in Virginia. Ken has worked and voted with Democrats on the EPA (with the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors), the triggerman law, innocent prisoners (Michael Herring), sex-trafficking, among other issues.
These are issues that really matter, but not to the big business Dixiecrats. They don’t want to compete; they want to stay in power. Because of Ken’s partisan reputation, it’s easy to win over some Republicans by throwing out code-words like “common sense” and “pragmatic.” They will co-opt the media in believing Ken is the boogeyman. But in reality, it’s this new tea party/libertarian alliance that is the true future of the Republican Party, and one that will make the GOP much less willing to play the crony capitalist game and more open to young and minority communities. The problem for the Dixiecrat Organization is they don’t have the Democrats to run back to anymore. As Cuccinelli takes over the GOP step by step, bringing along with him a new generation of elected officials less willing to do business the old fashion way in Richmond, the more they will appear like wolves in sheep clothing begging for bi-partisanship and pragmatism. They will bring good people, unaware of this history, with them and attempt to stay in power just a little but longer. I get it. There are people who don’t know Ken Cuccinelli, good Republicans who don’t know him but know Bill Bolling. Ken is from Northern Virginia, where no matter how conservative you are you will never be fully trusted in RVA. His positions have been strident. I can see how Bill Bolling, with a lazy message of pragmatism and good feelings from 2009, can sway those people.
So go, now, and read it all and learn.
