What a Complete Waste of Time
It is hard to put into words how frustrating it is to be a Virginia Republican.
Last weekend is just the latest and most stinging example of the short-sightedness and win-the-races-that-don’t-matter-at-all-costs mentality that has gripped the Virginia GOP. Despite Donald Trump winning the GOP primary in Virginia and being awarded the bulk of the delegates from Virginia, we watched as Ken Cuccinelli and a host of other pro-Ted Cruz stalwarts pushed through a slate of pro-Cruz national delegate candidates, slating off former Governor Jim Gilmore, former Lieutenant Governor and former RPV Chair John Hager, and even Corey Stewart, latest gubernatorial candidate and Trump’s Virginia Co-Chair. At the same time, Suzanne Obenshain, a former unit chair and women’s club president who has spent a lifetime in Virginia advocating for the GOP, lost her race for GOP National Committeewoman to a Texan with ties to Ted Cruz. In the 9th District and 10th District conventions, Ted Cruz slates won a majority of the National Delegates.
Why? All to further Cruz’s quixotic attempt to force a brokered convention.
Indiana was his last chance to tilt at this particular windmill, and he failed, like many of us have been saying he was going to fail since day one. Anybody reading the polls last week knew this was going to happen. It was obvious. But they pushed forward with these plans anyway. And losing Indiana made the whole thing moot.
All of it – Suzanne Obenshain’s loss, the anger and feelings of betrayal by Ken Cuccinelli coming from many who would have followed him into Hell if he asked them to, the backroom machinations – all was for nothing.
And then, predictably, the feeble cries of “unity” started up like they always do. “We walk out of this convention unified in defeating Hillary Clinton and the Democrats. This was an excellent weekend for Virginia Republicans and we look forward to Cleveland and more importantly winning Virginia and the White House in November,” said RPV Chair John Whitbeck.
Horseshit.
Last night, the cry rose softly over Prince William. “Now is a time for unity in the Virginia Republican Party,” Trump Co-Chair and not-a-convention-delegate Corey Stewart wrote in an email to supporters.
Because that’s going to happen.
The only thing unifying the conventioneers after last weekend was a collective dislike of conventions and nothing is going to unify the party nationally, especially behind Donald Trump. That cracking sound you just heard was the Grand Old Party of Lincoln splitting apart.
What happened last weekend, however, is just another in a long line of worthless gestures that seem to have become part of the Republican Creed. Worthless gestures are Ted Cruz’s MO, so everybody should have seen that coming. He is a master of the filibuster. The filibuster never accomplishes anything but delay, and he’s good at delay. This whole campaign since Super Tuesday, and arguably since South Carolina, has been one long filibuster – the equivalent of his government shutdown over Obamacare. In the end, he caved and lost, and what did the rest of us get?
Nothing. We got nothing.
In this case, we got worse than nothing. We damaged the social fabric of a party that was already in tatters, tearing new rips in relationships across the Commonwealth that are going to be a long time in healing. And all to try furthering a long-shot “brokered convention” political strategy built on wishes, hopes, and a lot of cheap vodka.
We could be forgiven if this is the first time we’ve done this. It’s not. It literally happens all the time.
As recently as 2012, we watched as the Ron Paul forces invaded our local unit elections and got themselves elected as delegates to the national convention, not realizing they would never even be able to cast a ballot on the floor for Ron Paul. Where are those people now? Gone. At the same time, Ken Cuccinelli’s team put together solid campaigns around Virginia and took control of the State Central Committee, pushing through a reversal of their previous decision on primaries to instead nominate our 2013 statewide candidates in a convention.
In 2013, we watched as Ken bullied Bill Bolling out of the Governor’s race, causing deep and long lasting divisions within the party that remain today. Ken proceeded to lose that race, and his supporters, instead of placing blame where it belongs, chose to blame Bill Bolling for Ken’s loss. We also lost the Lt. Governor’s race as the convention nominated the guy who gave the best speech, but had no crossover appeal and lost by the biggest margin on the ticket. He accomplished this feat largely by alienating moderates and independents with his out-in-left-field rhetoric.
In 2014, we watched as malcontents and self-proclaimed non-Republicans launched an obscure college professor’s long-shot congressional campaign against the sitting House Majority Leader. In what was another bitterly divisive race, the Majority Leader lost and was replaced by the most ineffective member of Congress from Virginia in a generation – and that includes the minority Democrats. Even the sitting Leader’s supporters and his mail consultant have been burned in effigy, and their names are used as boogeymen to scare children throughout the 7th District into eating their peas.
These types of things have happened without fail around Virginia like clockwork, and not just at the statewide or Congressional level. Even local races have created this kind of deep division. And most of the time, the result is a fat lot of nothing. Either we lose the general election, as we did in 2013, or we elect someone who can’t govern as well as his predecessor, like we did in 2014. In the end, all the anger, hate, and constant division was pointless. The ball is never moved forward. We lose races we could win, or we win races but leave ourselves weaker than we were before. Not a single conservative ideal is promoted, not a single GOP policy is enacted, and we watch as Democrats veto our bills, go around our no votes with executive orders, and repopulate the courts with their appointees.
We, the GOP, are the kings of shooting ourselves in the foot for nothing.
And we just did it again.
When are we ever going to learn?
