Glenn Youngkin’s victory in the Virginia gubernatorial race was not simply a successful Republican win in a state that seemed solidly Democratic. Beyond that, it represents the rejuvenation of a principled conservatism that can not only confront the cultural war that is now being waged, but also win it.
The Democrats have seen the exodus of party stalwarts to the GOP before. Former Texas Gov. John Connally famously left the party to become President Richard Nixon’s Treasury secretary. Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina could see he had little in common with the Democrats when he crossed the floor in the 1960s.
But the Virginia phenomenon represents more than mere disenchantment or political expediency. Democrats are waking up every morning and realizing that their party has been hollowed out by leftist ideologues who want to transform America into yet another failed experiment in Marxism.
It’s like Democrats finally realized that they had no reason to vote for the Democratic Party anymore. The party had long left them and it was time for them to leave the party and support candidates who thought as they did.
If Republican challenger Jack Ciattarelli takes the governor’s race in New Jersey from the lockdown king Gov. Phil Murphy, it will merely reinforce the message that Americans are beyond being sick and tired of having the government tell them and their children what to do and how to think. They are stomping on the Democratic cultural revolution and telling the communists behind it to go back to China and let America be free again.
Youngkin was a virtual unknown when the campaign began and he sought to change that status by literally attempting to meet every voter in Virginia in a campaign that was ceaseless in outreach to Republicans, Independents and Democrats.
He could have decided to run like a Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) Republican lite and suggested that a vote for him wouldn’t be that much different than a vote for McAuliffe.
That would have been a grave error because voters were clearly looking for a choice and plainly wanted a Republican candidate who sounded like one. So he presented a positive, principled conservatism that never sought to apologize for the widening ideological gulf between the GOP and the Democratic Party.
At times, he sounded amazingly and resoundingly like President Ronald Reagan – joyful in his personification of individual freedom; happy to talk about an America that is based on individual rights and not identity politics. He could have avoided talking about his pro-life convictions, his Christian beliefs, traditional views of family and sexuality. He didn’t. He had no desire to be something he wasn’t or to ape the wokeness insanity that has saturated every corner of American society.
We have much to thank former Gov. Terry McAuliffe for. It was McAuliffe’s stark honesty that immediately changed both the context and the potential of the campaign. Suddenly, this was a referendum on Democratic authoritarianism, wokeism, Critical Race Theory, cradle to grave socialism and left-wing ideology as defined by intellectual lightweights like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and the rest of the political clowns calling themselves a “squad” or posturing as a “progressive caucus” within the Democratic Party.
But if there was a turning point in the campaign, that moment when in retrospect it is possible to say, ‘Ah, here’s where the Democrats lost the election,’ it came on Sept. 28 during an exchange between Youngkin and McAuliffe when the former governor blithely admitted that the Democrats didn’t believe parents had any business poking their noses into their children’s education and to just allow the liberal elites to mold those young minds.
“In regard to our kids in schools, we are called for everyone to love everyone,” Youngkin said. “And I agree with your conclusion, Terry [McAuliffe], that we should let local school districts actually make these decisions. But we must ask them to include concepts of safety and privacy and respect in the discussion and we must ask that they include parents in the dialogue.”
“I’m not gonna let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decisions,” McAuliffe replied. “I stopped the bill that I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” He explained that he supports parents having the right to veto books rather than make decisions for the schools on which books are placed in school libraries.
On Tuesday night, a large number of Democrats turned their backs on a party that had long turned its back on them. This hasn’t been the party of John F. Kennedy since Lyndon Johnson sold the Great Society to Americans. It isn’t even the party of Jimmy Carter anymore.
It’s the party of President Joe Biden and that means it's a party without a leader; a party represented by any Democratic lawmaker or insider standing in front of the national media and promulgating party policy in conjunction with the woke culture.
How badly was the McAuliffe campaign run? It was a textbook example of how to lose and illustrated just how supercilious Democrats think the electorate is -- so in love with government control that it will happily embrace an arrogant, sarcastic and detached candidate who seemed annoyed that he was being asked to seek the approval of the electorate before heading back to the governor’s mansion.
McAuliffe deliberately and stupidly made the campaign about Democratic defects and brought in former President Barack Obama to hector and lecture the state about how all this fuss about brainwashing children into Critical Race Theory was just some sort of electoral sideshow that didn’t warrant any attention. "We don't have time to be wasted on these phony trumped-up culture wars, this fake outrage, the right-wing media's pedals to juice their ratings,” the king of fake outrage declared.
He invited Joe Biden to campaign for him – just as the president sank to his lowest approval levels and most Americans experienced the dawning realization that Biden is not just incapable of leading, he is clearly a triple threat of incompetence: losing energy independence, fueling inflation and looking like a hapless loser as he orchestrated the humiliating evacuation from Afghanistan.
If that wasn’t enough, McAuliffe asked for help from the other half of the consummate disaster that inhabits the White House. Vice President Kamala Harris is never the person you want to call when you need help but her video that was broadcast in black churches -- and might well have been illegal -- not only showcased the do-nothing VP at her most oleaginous it was clearly insulting to black voters, whom Democrats continue to believe will vote Democratic because the party deserves their vote – even if it was the Democratic Party that prevented blacks from voting through terror and poll taxes and enforced Jim Crow laws and segregation for a century.
Harris got one thing right. And she usually does. But it is almost always unintentional. While out on the hustings for McAuliffe, Harris noted, "What happens in Virginia will, in large part, determine what happens in 2022, 2024, and on."
Right on, Kamala. You may not be able to find the southern border but you do possess the prescience to realize that, for Democrats, the charade is over. Spiking the Keystone pipeline, laughing at the concept that voters should require ID, spending trillions to stimulate inflation and engender indolence, the blatant buffoonery of withdrawing from Afghanistan with hands held securely to our heads – it has all been too much, too soon. But telling us that we'll all be subjected to an odious racist doctrine that all white people are privileged exploiters and all black people hopeless victims -- voters had simply had enough and weren’t going to go along with old political gag anymore.
Youngkin wasn’t going to let the Democrats rule the agenda either. His principled conservatism won this election and should inspire anyone who fears America has become too woke or too ensnared by massive government spending to ever recover.
The recovery began Tuesday night.