The WaPo's Bizarre Detach From Reality
This morning's op-ed slamming the GOP field is precisely what one might expect from the crayon eaters.
To say that the editorial standards at the Washington Post have slipped a tiny bit is mere understatement. That they broke out the crayon box and let the interns write screeds such as these is simply embarrassing:
DONALD TRUMP’S 2020 losing margin in Virginia was the biggest for any presidential candidate in that state in 32 years, but the Republicans vying for their party’s gubernatorial nomination in the state’s May 8 convention just can’t quit him.
I fail to recall the Washington Post framing the election in another way: That after five months of riots in the summer of 2020, calls to “defund the police” that nearly cost them Rep. Abigail Spangberger’s seat, and now open resistance from liberals and conservatives against imposing Critical Race Theory (CRT) into the classroom — Virginia Democrats are on the cusp of nominating candidates who are every bit the caricature of what they believe Republicans to be, watching Mark Herring (in blackface) run for attorney general again and have the other guy — Ralph Northam (blackface or hood; captain’s choice) — openly endorse Terry McAuliffe in a Putinesque tradeoff of power.
Clever Brokeback Mountain quip, kiddos.
With the exception of state Sen. Amanda F. Chase (Chesterfield), who channels the former president’s incendiary bombast, the other major contenders pay lip service to a politics of inclusion that would broaden the GOP’s appeal…
Says a political party that couldn’t eject two openly racist statewide elected officials in Northam and Herring, and whose solution to CRT is to literally give the nomination for two of the most powerful positions in Virginia to the guy endorsed by the man in blackface, and the guy who admitted to wearing blackface. Meanwhile, the least powerful statewide nomination — lieutenant governor — can just go to whomever…
…a sensible strategy for a party that has lost every statewide election in Virginia since 2009. At the same time, they can’t seem to refrain from stances and statements that veer from immigrant-bashing to anti-LGBTQ dog-whistling to election “integrity” programs that would make voting harder, and the electorate smaller. Fine for the Trumpian party base, but not exactly a recipe for a politics of inclusion.
Immigrant bashing? Unless we’re talking about folks moving from New Jersey, has immigration been a key issue in the gubernatorial campaign?
LGBTQ dog whistling? I fail to recall this as even being an issue (other than a nameless third party group whose existence the Democrats seem to have had advanced notice — funny that).
Election integrity programs? One needs a Photo ID to board an airplane, pick up tickets at will call (thanks MLB), pick up a prescription, etc. It is too incredible to ask that you require a Photo ID before you exercise one of the most important rights protected by the US Constitution?
Problem is, the cubicle dwellers at the Washington Post haven’t caught on to the winds of change. It’s not just conservatives that are more than a bit ticked off at the internal squabblings (and open racism) of the Virginia Democratic Party. Moderates and liberals — suburbanites all — from the likes of John McWhorter, Bari Weiss, and Glenn Greenwald are starting to question the woke political orthodoxy bordering on McCarthyism.
Granted, there are major differences among them. Del. Kirk Cox (Colonial Heights), a retired teacher who was speaker of the House of Delegates before Democrats won control of the chamber in 2019, is a serious legislator and by temperament a traditional Republican — fiscally conservative, antiabortion, pro-gun rights. He says his “whole life has been about trying to attract different folks” to the party fold, and in office he’s had a pragmatic streak, for instance dropping his opposition to expanding Medicaid on the condition that recipients be required to work. So it is jarring to hear Mr. Cox now dismiss anti-racist guidance to state teachers as “nonsense” and pledge to “go further” to restrict voting than Georgia did with its restrictive law in March.
Perhaps that’s because these so-called “anti-racist” guidelines are deeply flawed, enforce mediocrity, and are inherently racist and malignant at core?
Unlike his main rivals, Mr. Cox does acknowledge that President Biden won the 2020 election fairly. Yet like them, he has issued an election “integrity” plan — a wink to the stop-the-steal fantasists in his party base.
That’s because Photo ID isn’t racism. Crazy idea that integrity is the antidote to racism.
Wild, I know.
True, his vote-limiting blueprint is more modest than those of the two multimillionaires in the contest: social media entrepreneur Pete Snyder, whose 23-point agenda would embroil elections in the state in a tangle of pernicious restrictions; and former private equity executive Glenn Youngkin, whose own five-point plan for an election integrity “task force” is the only detailed policy proposal he has put forward.
Is the word “embroil” like the word pounce?
More to the point, a 23-point plan is a tangle of “pernicious restrictions” but a 5-point plan lacks the sort of detail the WaPo crayon eaters require?
Come on.
Mr. Snyder’s evolution in politics is a study in Trumpian distortion.
Is it a study in Northamer distortion? Herringese distortion? McAuliffian distortion? I’m running out of suffixes here…
In his unsuccessful 2013 race for lieutenant governor, he positioned himself as a pragmatic businessman and worried that the GOP had shrunk its aspirations “from Big Tent to pup tent.” Now, he is an enthusiastic downsizer, boasting endorsements from his party’s most incendiary culture warriors and vowing to deport “violent illegal immigrants” once he’s governor.
So be Big Tent. But not too Big Tent!
Thanks WaPo… I mean hell, that’s just marvelous political advice. Be inclusive — but not those people!
Which, to the point of the anti-racism (sic) above… well… you know…
Use the other box of crayons next.
Mr. Youngkin’s campaign is built on a scaffolding of slogans and dodgy assertions.
Dear UK Economist,
I just wrote this bloody delightful yet daft opinion paper for the pages of the Washington Post entitled “How using British slang will help my future career with the UK Economist as I demonstrate just how center-right I can pretend to be.” As a 24-year old, you should hire this bloke while ze is still young enough to know everything. Please enjoy my pish-posh as I throw the wobbly under the guise of opinion in order to pretend to be cheekily objective, honest and chuffed.
Most Americanly yours (in purple crayon),
Chad (ze/zim)
He says Democrats are defunding the police; there are no examples of that in Virginia and few elsewhere.
Which begs the question as to whether these interns actually read their own newspaper:
The Democrats literally ran on defunding the police.
Spanberger literally took her own House Democratic caucus to the ever-loving woodshed over it.
Virginia Democrats are literally doubling down on this rhetoric. Are they ever pressed on it?
FACTCHECK: No one in the media is going to dig around for this, even if Republicans keep pointing to the grease fire in the kitchen — we rate this false until the entire kitchen catches on fire, then mostly true only after we have to call the fire department.
This is literally the Catch-22.
Not metaphorically.
Not actually.
But literally (because you’re actually reading this).
He insists Republicans can win “through addition and multiplication and not through division and subtraction,” yet signaled his own intolerance by attacking former governor Terry McAuliffe…
WAIT! Youngkin commits the cardinal sin of challenging (attacking!) his opposition?
One almost was led to believe that politics was a process of raising positive reasons to vote for a candidate and negative reasons not to vote for the other guy in a stark contrast of ideas, values, and policy goals.
Is this the editorial page of a respectable newspaper? Or MSNBC?
…the front-runner in this year’s Democratic field, for opposing laws that allow religious groups to discriminate based on sexual orientation.
Most of us call that freedom of religion and it can be helpfully found in any cursory glance at the First Amendment, where we specifically do not coerce people to violate their sincerely held religious convictions.
For a generation where the Soviet Union is in a history book? Sure… but for the rest of us for whom Soviet communism is memory and not history? No small wonder why the Democrats are losing the suburbs (and why the WaPo can’t see it).
Bigotry, divisiveness and extremist policies have contributed to the GOP’s losing streak in Virginia.
If the argument is that the Democrats are running on bigotry (Northam and Herring), divisiveness (critical race theory), and extremist policies (forcing people to violate their religious convictions in order to participate in the public square) — then yes, the Democrats have run on precisely these things.
As the state grows more diverse, it has shifted to the political center.
Is the “political center” between these two guys?
Yet as this year’s field of gubernatorial candidates demonstrates, many in the party remain entrenched on the fringe.
If that’s the center, I’ll take the fringe any ol’ time.
So why the long dissection of this mediocre high school editorial? It’s not that I take pleasure in pounding on the illogic of recently-graduated college undergraduates. Nor is it that I take offense at the caging of anyone who disagrees with them as hostis humani generis.
I take that back. I do take offense at this, and until such a time until folks can demonstrate it? They really do hate us.
But more to the point is that Virginia Democrats know their institutions are under attack and for good reason. No small wonder why the institutions that Northam, Herring, and McAuliffe all stretch themselves to defend — public education, the media, academia, state and local bureaucracies — are all pushing back not just at conservative objections but progressive objections as well.
As the Democrats succumb to perversions of Critical Race Theory (and Kendi’s “anti-racism” is a distortion of what critical theory is supposed to represent), it is liberal voices that join with conservative in objection.
In short, Virginia Democrats can’t sell two visions of the future that are diametrically at war with one another. Either the liberal institutions have it right, or the progressive dismantlers have it right.
The Washington Post knows this as an organ of propaganda.
So what does it choose to do? Focus on the flaws of the opposition rather than on the vast internal fissures within the Virginia Democrats.
Let’s all be honest for just one moment. If the tables were turned and Republicans had two statewide elected officials caught wearing blackface, were imposing Christian Religious Theory (CRT) in our public schools, had Proud Boys rioting in our streets for five months, had needlessly shut down the economy for a year, botched the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, had our own Parole Board scandal, yet simultaneously was facing tremendous internal pressure not to do these things?
How would the Washington Post cover this? Much less the national media? What breathless hot takes would we get from political scientists, op-ed writers, observers, media journalists parachuting in from outside of Virginia, rising journalists and reporters? Podcasters? Academics? Thought leaders?
We all know the answer to this. More importantly, the Washington Post editorial board knows the answer to this because we saw it as they mercilessly punished George Allen in 2006 over the word macaca.
It isn’t the double standard at the Washington Post that galls so many. It’s the complete lack of standards that is so disappointing.
That Terry McAuliffe wants to stand on a soapbox telling the rest of the world that he is going to “grab the broom of re-faum and sweep this state clean!” when the Northam-McAuliffe clan has had eight years of making a total mess of things.
No one is buying it this time.
By the way, if you haven’t voted in the TRS Poll for the Republican gubernatorial nod, please take a moment to do so here.
Poll will stay open until Sunday evening!
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.