The Washington Post issues its endorsements for local Virginia House of Delegate seats. All four are currently occupied by Republicans, and there discussion of each race begins by observing that, in essence, the incumbent is a lunatic. There's the one who was one "of a handful of lawmakers to speak out against an otherwise highly qualified judicial nominee who happened to be gay." There's the one who "voted to study whether Virginia should develop its own currency as a hedge against financial chaos." There's the one whose "contempt for homosexuals is surpassed only by his disregard for women who have abortions; he suggested that God exacts vengeance on women who abort their fetuses by assuring that their next pregnancy will produce a disabled child." And finally there's the one "who has tormented gays, immigrants and women with his right-wing views."
Well, that makes life easy doesn't it? Not so fast! Two of these four somehow managed to get the Post's endorsement anyway. That's because it appears that the Post's only criteria for its endorsement was a vote for a transportation bill the paper thought was important. Two of the incumbents voted for the bill and garnered an endorsement, two opposed it and saw the nod go to their challenger. Simple as that.
In case you're curious, the lucky duo who got the endorsement were Mr. Won't Vote for the Gay and Mr. Create our own Currency (incredibly, the Post managed to call both "pragmatists" for their transportation vote in the same paragraph that they opened by detailing their extremism).
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2 comments:
Virginia clearly can't compete against the $; currency powers are actually explicit in Article I Section 8 and thus exclusive to the nat'l gov't. That anyone who voted to further that idea could then get a credible endorsement... begs the credibility question, I guess. Ridiculous.
I do notice that both the incumbent endorsees are freshmen, versus more than a decade each in service for the others. Also, the argument of "knowledge about local issues" was deployed at least twice to justify an endorsement. Political experience in the House of Delegates didn't seem to count for much, but in 3 of the 4 they cited lower government experience to justify the endorsement also (the exception was the teacher who is challenging the "god enacts vengeance" guy).
"who happened to be gay" is a slightly dishonest description. At the time, conservatives claimed they opposed the candidate because as a Navy pilot, he had challenged “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Many insisted that if he had not been an activist against a military policy, they would not have opposed him simply for being gay.
But yeah, the "make our own currency" guy sounds like an idiot.
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