In case you were hoping against hope that Republicans would wake up to reality and wean themselves from Trump, just check out the governor’s race in Virginia. It’s the marquee campaign of 2021 – heck, it’s one of the only campaigns in 2021 – and the GOP’s quintet of candidates seems determined to marinate anew in MAGA stew. You’re right to wonder what the fug is wrong with these people.
Trump lost the White House thanks to the largest Buzz Off turnout in American history. Thanks to him, Republicans lost the House in 2018 and lost the Senate in 2021. Indeed, last November he lost Virginia – a once reliable red state – by a whopping 10 percentage points, the worst loss for a Republican presidential candidate in 56 years. He was such an albatross that, during his tenure, Virginia Republicans lost control of the state legislature for the first time in 25 years.
Yet, despite that humiliating string of defeats, and the overwhelming evidence that MAGA is toxic in Virginia’s burgeoning swing suburbs, the Republican gubernatorial candidates are still licking the demagogue’s shoes – because “the base” is still bedazzled by the loser’s Big Lie. According to the polls, the clear front-runner in the race is Amanda Chase (pictured above), a state legislator who calls herself “Trump in heels.” Chase says (in defiance of the facts) that the election was “stolen,” and take a wild guess where she was on Jan. 6 when insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol.
She’s preaching to the choir. Most Americans – and most Virginians – have moved on from 2020 and acknowledged that Joe Biden won the election fair and square…but the Republican base still doesn’t buy it, no sirree. In Virginia, 61 percent of Republicans still don’t believe Biden’s win was legit. Hence Chase’s decision, and her rivals’ decision as well, to double down and pump more rhetorical poison into the echo chamber. Because the candidates all figure it’s the only way to win the Republican nomination this spring.
As veteran Republican strategist Al Cardenas recently lamented, the election-fraud myth lives on, and “The Big Lie will continue to be perpetuated.”
Virginia candidate Glenn Youngkin, a former hedge fun investor, is promising to set up an “Election Integrity Task Force” to monitor ballot abuse (in Virginia last fall, there was zero evidence of abuse); entrepreneur Pete Snyder is calling for “NFL-style scouting reports” on Virginia election officials, thinks that state police should have a big role in investigating fraud (in Virginia last fall, there was zero evidence of fraud), and he’s running an ad vowing to “stop liberals from rigging the system (63 lawsuits were rejected or thrown out of court, because the system wasn’t rigged); and former think tank CEO Peter Dolan is touting his own “Voter Integrity Plan.”
Meanwhile, former state House Speaker Kirk Cox says that he too would create an “election integrity operation.” He recently explained his envisioned “operation” in classic racist code: “I will make sure – and I will fund this as governor – we have got to have an election integrity operation second to none inside these polling places. And they can’t be in the nice precincts. It’s got to be in the tough precincts.”
“Nice” precincts versus “tough” precincts. Even the deafest dog can hear that whistle.
An ounce of courage – a willingness to tell voters the truth – would be very nice. Clearly they’re unaware that the 10 House Republicans who voted this winter to impeach Trump have actually been raking in a lot more fundraising money since taking that stand.
It’s a mystery how Virginia Republicans can believe that “stop the steal” nonsense will propel them to a statewide gubernatorial victory in November. I suppose they need to guzzle the Kool-Aid in order to please the grassroots loons who still march to Trump’s tune (last weekend he lied yet again about “the rampant voter fraud and rigged election that occurred on Nov. 3”), but the fact is that Republicans haven’t won a statewide race in Virginia since 2009…and that was before the party became a cult of twisted personality.
But hey, if they prefer to vanish down the MAGA rabbit hole and ensure that Virginia stays blue, that’s their choice. If Amanda Chase wants to hail the Capitol insurrectionists as “patriots,” that’s her choice. And if she wants to flatter the MAGA base by declaring that “the people are awake,” perhaps someone can remind the state’s mainstream electorate that her choice of words eerily mirrors the Nazi rallying cry “Germany Awake.” For what it’s worth, I just did.