The long-running and seemingly never-ending battle between the major factions of the Republican Party of Virginia has one major difference with the usual fights that seem to defy the passage of time. Usually, the two camps just can’t seem to understand each other. In this case, the RPV’s factions have forgotten themselves.
Depending upon your point of view, the argument is either a battle between Mainstream Republicans and Extreme Tea-Partiers or a raging conflict between the Establishment and the Grass-Roots. As it happens, both are equally wrong.
Most Republican state parties watched in surprise as FDR transformed the body politic. The GOP’s corporatist policies went from the big-government alternative to the small-government alternative almost overnight. It took decades for some Republican parties to make the transition, except in southern states where the GOP was too small and insignificant before FDR to have any lasting impact during his tenure. The Republican Parties that sprang up afterward in the South were much more comfortable as the party of limited government.
What many don’t realize is that Virginia was not that type of southern state. The RPV had a strong presence in the Shenandoah and New River Valleys (to the point of electing 3 Congressman in 1928), and kept the 9th District one of the most competitive in the nation between 1870 and 1940 (hence the term “Fighting Ninth”). When the Republicans began rebuilding in Virginia (in the 1950s and 1960s), the corporatists not only still held sway, but they were also fighting the last of the limited-government Democrats (Harry Byrd). Ironically, as the Democrats moved leftward nationally in the late 1960s and 1970s, much of the old Byrd machine became the insurgent faction in the RPV. They even defeated the old guard in 1973 by nominating ex-Democrat Mills Godwin for Governor that year.
That changed with the rise of social conservatives, who largely allied with the “mountain-valley” wing of the party and unhorsed the ex-Byrd-Democrats. The RPV of the 1980s ran hard on social issues, leaving economic issues behind (it should be noted that the Democrats swept all three state elections that decade: 1981, 1985, and 1989). It wasn’t until George Allen stitched together the coalition of social conservatives and economic conservatives that Virginia Republicans started winning in Virginia again. However, Allen did not dislodge the social conservative leaders within the party. They still held sway…as they do for the most part today.
This matters because the passage of three decades has led Virginia Republicans to confuse social conservatism with the default position in Republican politics. It was not always so, and it is not always so in the other 49 states. But because it has been for so long here, the social conservatives who are less than conservative on economic issues consider themselves “mainstream,” while their critics have seen them run the party for so long that the “Establishment” label is thrown.
In fact, social conservatives who are happy to grow government are not mainstream in Virginia at all – and they’ve proven it by losing repeatedly (2001, 2005, and 2013). By contrast, social conservatives who embrace economic conservatism can win over Virginians who want to keep taxes low, notwithstanding social issue disagreements (2009).
What the RPV is experiencing is not about Establishment-versus-volunteers, or about extremism. It’s the standard-issue social conservative-economic conservative fight that all Republican parties must endure in some fashion. Because most GOPs see it for what it is, they can resolve them in time. Hopefully, we can do the same, once we all recognize who we really are.
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