Why Would We Reward Amanda Chase With a Primary Contest?
After storming the US Capitol, Virginia Republicans would be making a catastrophic mistake giving the Dixiecrats the nomination method they want.
Just days after her fellow travelers raided the US Capitol, forces within the Republican Party of Virginia are pushing its governing body to reward State Senator Amanda Chase (I-Chesterfield) with her preferred nomination method: a primary.
That is utter insanity.
If you are a member of the RPV State Central Committee, realize what sort of signal you are sending by reconsidering the unassembled convention — a system that would offer ranked choice voting and allow conservatives to settle on our best candidate rather than someone who might win with 20% of the vote.
The message that Republicans will send is that — in the wake of violence — that the voices we saw on national television might actually speak for the rest of us after all.
Polls show that 81% of Americans utterly reject the violence of last Wednesday, with 51% of Americans believing that it was an attempted coup d’etat.
Amanda Chase has already called those who stormed the US Capitol patriots. People who beat and killed one US Capitol Police officer… a patriot?!
There is no greater mistake that the Republican Party of Virginia could commit that would doom the conservative movement for the next five years at precisely the right moment when the entire nation is looking for Virginians to lead us forward — not backward.
Campaigns both announced and unannounced — save one — have been operating for the better part of a month under the premise that our nomination contest would be an unassembled convention that would settle on the most conservative candidate that can win.
Moving to a primary would not only force these campaigns to spend resources, folks can be assured that the DGA and other left-wing groups will work assiduously to make sure Amanda Chase is on the ballot.
What’s more, with McAuliffe sewing up the Democratic nod for governor and Virginia having open primaries? The Democrats would love nothing better than to run against the Dixiecrats in Republican drag.
Did we mention that Chase isn’t even a Republican?
Reversing course on the convention is the absolute worst decision we could make. Chase’s odds of securing a plurality of votes increase exponentially if one believes the YouGov poll suggesting that as many as 45% of Republicans supported the violence at the US Capitol last week.
This isn’t really a question of whether or not one supports a primary over a convention. Or whether it is terrible precedent to set the method of nomination only to reconsider what Chairman Rich Anderson has already stated is settled (twice).
Amanda Chase has already threatened to leave the party over the selection of a convention; why should we reward her temper tantrums by giving in to what she explicitly wants?
The real question is whether or not voices such as Amanda Chase actually do speak for the rest of us?
If the answer to that question is yes, then vote for a primary.
If the answer to that question is no? Don’t reward Amanda; keep our convention.
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.