The Most Boring of General Assembly Sessions
As this session continues to wind down to a rather boring conclusion, Republicans should be keen to find small opportunities to focus on what a 2023 agenda might look like.
If you're a red meat conservative, aside from face masks going away this year's General Assembly session has been predictably boring.
This isn't to say that Republicans in the General Assembly haven't been doing their jobs in ones-and-twos. Speaker Todd Gilbert (R-Shenandoah) is playing a masterful hand at this rate, doing the most with what he can. After all, the mask mandates went away because both the House Republicans and the Senate Republicans artfully solicited and engaged the help of one State Sen. Chap Petersen (D-Fairfax) -- one of a number of center-left Democrats quickly realizing that the progressive left is a losing proposition in 2022 and 2023.
...and yet.
One of the more frustrating things about watching the sausage get made is that when Democrats are in power, they go by leaps and bounds. Yet when Republicans take back the reins of power, most of what we do is cement the gains made by the political left. The reason why isn't too terribly difficult to decipher. The institutions -- unelected yet wielding immense power -- who benefit from the law-rigging want the changes to remain and will scream bloody murder if you attempt to revert back to the status quo.
Therein lies the great difficulty for conservatives in Virginia.
Shaun Kenney is the editor of The Republican Standard, former chairman of the Board of Supervisors for Fluvanna County, and a former executive director of the Republican Party of Virginia.