The Feast of the Baby Heads

Upon Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin's inauguration, I made an observation about how wonderful it is to be Republican in purple-state America. Namely, that so long as you hold off on biting off a baby head during the campaign, the media will declare you the very essence of sobriety and moderation, and dismiss anyone who tries to tell otherwise. Then, once you enter office, you can bite as many baby heads as you want -- shocking the professional punditocracy (and gullible "independent" voter) who was ever-so-sure you were actually quite reasonable!

I made that observation upon Youngkin's opening gubernatorial salvo designed to help COVID be even more lethal. But it also applies to his latest round of petty partisan vindictiveness, vetoing widely popular bipartisan initiatives that passed the legislature by overwhelming margins for no other reason than that they were sponsored by Democrats. After "earning" the title of a moderate for, as best I can tell, no other reason other than that he wears fuzzy fabrics, Governor Youngkin has in his first few months been gorging himself on the baby heads that he temporarily deprived himself of on the campaign trail -- governing as a virulent right-wing extremist in a state that remains purplish-blue. The best analogy I can think of is if a Democrat manages to sneak into the Missouri governor's mansion in an off-year election and immediately abolishes the police. It's simultaneously unfathomable and yet exactly what one gets from these so-called "moderates".

The reality is that there are, functionally speaking, no more moderate Republicans -- a fact which does not remotely seem to dampen the media's willingness to be duped into believing that this Republican will be a moderate. We went through this a few years back with Cory Gardner -- the Denver Post endorsed him in 2014 against then Senator Mark Udall, saying it was "unfair" to label Gardner an "extremist" and predicting he'd be a fresh and independent voice in the Senate, only to shame-facedly admit its mistake when it turned out he was an utterly bog-standard right-wing hack. Who could have predicted? Answer: everybody! And so it is too with Youngkin. But alas, we didn't learn the lesson then and we certainly won't learn it now. Instead, we're doomed to repeat this dance every single election cycle it seems.

Virginia's Newly Anointed Death Cult High Priest Prepares Initial Sacrifices

Death may be an inevitability, but the current Republican Party ethos appears to be to do everything in its power to speed the process along. Freshly minted Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin has rolled out an initial series of executive orders, and I have to imagine that Thanatos is pleased. He repealed state masking and vaccine mandates, so COVID can get us in the short-term, and he withdrew from a major anti-greenhouse gas initiative, so climate change can kill us in the long-term. No matter which way you turn, the GOP is cuddling up with the Reaper.

Oh, and there's also the unavoidable "ban on critical race theory" (perhaps soon to be paired with mandatory lessons on Abraham Lincoln's famous debates with Frederick Douglass?). Admittedly not death-related, unless you count the death of civics education.

This is, to reiterate, the opening gambits from a Republican who squeaked into office in a purple-blue state by a 2% margin. It's as if Missouri elected a Democrat as Governor in an off-year and his first move in office was to abolish the police. The gumption is nearly unfathomable.

But this is the great thing about being a purple state Republican. The media -- and, admittedly, a certain cohort of voters -- is so thirsty for a "reasonable Republican" that if you just hold off on biting off a baby head during the campaign, they will decide that you represent the very essence of sobriety and moderation, and anyone who tries to tell otherwise is just fear-mongering (cf. Scott Lemieux: "The greatest act of incivility in American politics ... is to accurately describe a Republican’s publicly stated positions."). 

Then, once you enter office, you can bite as many baby heads as you want! And everyone will be so shocked, and sad, and surprised, that he is doing exactly what Democrats said Republicans will do because it's also what Republicans said Republicans will do.