Suffolk GOP Goes Down Memory Lane … Sort Of
“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!” – Al Pacino as Michael Corleone, Godfather Part III
When I left the Republican Party in 2016, it meant an end to many pleasant things. One thing not on the “pleasant” list was the long-running battle within the Republican Party of Virginia (RPV) regarding how to nominate candidates.
Seven years later, the primary-versus-convention battle lands practically in my back yard (WaPo).
Richmond Circuit Court Judge Claire G. Cardwell on Wednesday ordered state Elections Commissioner Susan Beals to once again schedule the June GOP primary that had been announced earlier this month but then called off.
…
The suit alleges that Youngkin and Miyares thought the convention format would be more favorable to their preferred candidate, Del. Emily M. Brewer (R-Suffolk), than to her rival, former NASCAR driver Hermie Sadler.
There was a time when Emily and I served on the Suffolk GOP committee, but we haven’t spoken in a while and this post is not about her personally. The real story here is that, years after Donald Trump went down the escalator and transformed the GOP from a reasonable center-right party to a refuge for pro-Moscow fifth-columnists and other authoritarian sympathizers, the convention vs. primary battles can still rage within the party. On one level, it’s a charming nostalgia. In reality though, it’s nothing like the old fights. Trump has reoriented this one, too.
In the pre-Trump era, primary versus convention was a simple proxy for moderate versus conservative. Back then, the RPV was run by a series of elected officials with a bad habit of raising taxes (three times in less than a decade). Meanwhile, a slew of angry activists within the party machinery (of which I was one), were looking to replace them with what we called “real” conservatives.
By 2016, I came to the painful realization that my definition of that term was decidedly in the minority. I wasn’t the only one who came to that realization, however. No one in the RPV wants to remember this anymore, but much of the activists were terrified of a Trump nomination. It was Republican voters, not the elected officials or the party activists, that chose Trump.
At that moment, the old battle was turned on its head. Now it was the Trumpers who demanded primaries while the “RINOs” – terrified of mini-Trumps dragging the party to defeat – began to see the wisdom of conventions. This accelerated after Corey Stewart, stymied by convention in 2013, used a primary to win the nomination against Tim Kaine in 2018.
That didn’t go well for the RPV.
Three years later, another Trumpist outsider (Amanda Chase) found her voter wave short-circuited by a virtual convention. The beneficiary is currently Governor of Virginia.
So this is not the primary-convention fight of old. The insiders who didn’t trust Republicans are no longer looking to independents and conservative Democrats to help them in primaries. They now know Trump-first voters hold sway in primaries. They now know they have a better chance to control the process with conventions.
More to the point, however, I now know this for what it really is … an argument about deck chairs on the Titanic…
… if it had a nuclear powered engine …
… and we were all living on the iceberg.
