Resistance is futile! The GOP’s Swampsters better get used to the settled political reality: Trumpification is complete. [Trump litmus test hits House GOP primaries, By Elena Schneider, Politico, May 2, 2018] Witness Virginia: The races to run as a Republican in e.g, the 6th Congressional District and U.S. Senate race has already been won by supporters of Donald J. Trump.
In VA-6, ten candidates head to a convention in Harrisonburg on May 19. VA-6 a solid, safe GOP seat. Barring a miracle, one of these candidates will replace the retiring Bob Goodlatte (author of the Securing America’s Future Act bill.)
And then, On June 12, three candidates for the Senate nomination vie for November’s run against Sen. Tim Kaine, the comsymp masquerading as a Democrat and Catholic. [Tim Kaine's radical roots, by Ken Blackwell, The Hill, September 9, 2016]
Winning that one is more problematic. The GOP is having a tough time winning statewide races in Virginia, despite electoral maps that show the state is mostly red. Like the rest of the country, Virginia’s urban centers are vote-rich precincts for the Left.
First, VA-6. The top contenders on May 19 are Ben Cline and Cynthia Dunbar.
Cline is an eight-term member of the House of Delegates from the 24th District and a former prosecutor in the Rockingham County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office. He’s a conventional Catholic conservative and even looks like Paul Ryan. Nevertheless, Cline has aligned himself with The Donald, most importantly on the Immivasion. From his campaign website:
We must secure our southern border by completing the border wall and working to streamline and improve our immigration system. It is time to immediately end visa lotteries, visa quotas, and chain migration. We must continue to deport illegal immigrants and pull all federal funding from sanctuary cities that willfully ignore the rule of law.
Cline’s also good on guns, taxes and (from my Catholic perspective) on abortion. He has landed the endorsements of Trump’s state campaign chief Mike Rubino and the campaign’s national field director, Stuart Jolly. Cline mentioned Trump no less than 10 times in a letter to supporters citing these endorsements. [bencline.com/issue-positions]
Either Cline is unafraid to ally himself with the Man From Mar-A-Lago—or he knows he must, if he is to beat to Cynthia Dunbar, a fire-breathing, evangelical Christian and law professor at Liberty University in Lynchburg.
A GOP national committeewoman, Dunbar is garlic and crucifix to the Establishment’s vampires. She was too tough on textbook publishers as a member of the Texas Board of Education, they complain, she’s a kook for thinking the United States is, or was, a Christian nation, and she allegedly tried to remove Thomas Jefferson from the school curriculum because he believed in separation of church and state. Scare quotes and YouTube videos abound.[ Dunbar’s Distorted Views on Jefferson, by Dan Quinn, TFN.org, March 19, 2010]
But, ominously from the point of view of VDARE.com readers, Dunbar’s website is blank on immigration.
She has conceded the need for “reform,” and says “our immigration policy are just a few reasons why Americans elected Republicans”. [“Conservative Stalwart Cynthia Dunbar Announces VA Congressional Bid,” Barbwire.com, Nov. 9, 2017]
Meaning what? The Wall? Ending chain migration? Stopping the Muslim phalanx? Or does Dunbar follow Soros Evangelical Russell Moore, chieftain of pro-immigrant forces among the religious right?
Bur whatever the answer, she backs Trump. “Drain The Swamp,” her website says. She spoke at a rally for The Donald in December.
The other candidates aren’t worth mentioning. Not one can win.
But Dunbar might, which led the Leftist Roanoke Times, citing Dunbar’s background, to speculate in an editorial about a possible Democrat victory:
The odds of a Democrat to win this seat are normally close to zero; however, the prospect that Republicans might nominate Dunbar increases those odds significantly. Democrats did win this seat in 1982, because three things happened: (1.) It was a Democratic year nationwide. (2.) Republicans nominated the “wrong” candidate — a candidate who was both too conservative and from outside the population center of the Roanoke Valley. (3.) Democrats nominated the “right” candidate —a candidate who was moderate enough to appeal to disaffected Republicans and was from the Roanoke Valley.
That first condition seems to exist. A Dunbar nomination would check off the second requirement. Whether Democrats can check off the third is still debatable — so far the party has two candidates, neither of whom is well-known even in political circles.... Will the very real prospect of a Dunbar nomination increase the odds that a better-known Democrat gets into the race? We’ll see. We don’t live in normal times; we live in strange times.
[Editorial: Both Dunbar and a mystery Democrat get an advantage , The Roanoke Times, January 9, 2018].
As far as the convention goes, Cline says the party is trying to rig the result in favor of Dunbar. The 6th District Committee’s convention call had said a plurality vote, rather than a majority established through multiple ballots, would decide the winner. A plurality vote hurts Cline because Dunbar’s Religious-Right shock troops will blitzkrieg the convention. But the state GOP committee overturned that decision and put it in the hands of delegates to decide on plurality vs. majority that day. [Virginia GOP overturns plurality vote to determine 6th District nominee, By Bob Stuart, Roanoke.com, March 27, 2018]
Should Dunbar defeat Cline, Democrats hope for a repeat of the Cuccinelli-Jackson-Obenshain debacle in 2013, largely the result of a well-orchestrated, MSM-GOP-Swamp smear campaign that painted Ken Cuccinelli as a Right-wing nut and E.W. Jackson, a black Harvard lawyer and evangelical, as even nuttier. Poke around under these headlines to find out why Cuccinelli lost a very close race.
But the bottom line: no-one—no-one— is running in VA-6 as a Kasich-Kristol Never-Trumper
Three men are running in the GOP U.S. Senate primary to replace Marxist fellow-traveler Tim Kaine
First is Corey Stewart, chairman of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors, who lost a close gubernatorial primary to establishmentarian Ed Gillespie last year. Stewart’s losing map for the primary looks like Gillespie’s for the general. Stewart beat Gillespie everywhere but the most liberal parts of the state that put Leftist brain surgeon Ralph Northam over the top against Gillespie.
Stewart isn’t just a Trump backer. He ran the Trump campaign in Virginia until being fired for being Trumpier than Trump over the Republican National Committee’s attempt to dump Trump in October 2016 (remember?). [You’re Fired: Trump campaign dumps Virginia state chair Corey Stewart, By Sean Sullivan and Laura Vozzella, WaPo, October 10, 2016] But Stewart still supports his former boss.
And Stewart’s top talking points won’t warm the hearts of those who peddle the myth of Homo Economicus: not taxes and limited government, but jobs and (illegal} immigration:
Illegal Immigration
Rampant, unchecked illegal immigration threatens America's security, jobs, and tax dollars.
In Prince William County, Corey led the nation’s toughest crackdown on illegal immigration - resulting in over 7,500 criminal illegal aliens being turned over for deportation.
Corey will fight illegal immigration, amnesty, and ban sanctuary cities as boldly as he did in Prince William County. Every illegal immigrant arrested should be deported – no questions asked. … Stewart will oppose any form of amnesty, and he won’t back down to establishment pressure. [coreystewart.com/issues]
No. 3? Guns. No. 4? Abortion.
Former Lieutenant Governor Candidate E.W. Jackson sounds like Trump too:
Stand with President Trump
E.W. Jackson supports President Trump’s America First Agenda, and he will partner with him to bring renewal to our Commonwealth. He will never side with the weak, establishment Republicans who attack the President and refuse to support his agenda.
And a wall?
Build the Wall, Stop Illegals Flooding into Our Country!
Diversity is great. Immigration is great. Illegal immigrants flooding into our country committing crimes, taking our jobs, and benefiting from our tax dollars is not. It’s time we build the wall we promised, remove the carrots that draws illegals into our country, and empower law enforcement to deal with the problem. Illegal immigration must never be rewarded with American citizenship.
The diversity-and-immigration-are-great buncombe aside, Jackson repeatedly cites Trump at his website: “Drain The Swamp … Make Better Deals.”
With Stewart and Jackson, we don’t get the policy wonkery of candidate Nick Freitas, an Iraq vet who represents Virginia’s 30th District in the House of Delegates. If only the former Special Forces operator were as tough politically as he is mentally and physically.
As Stewart’s Never Trump Nick website brutally shows, Freitas was the closet candidate extant to a Never-Trumper, and his webpage is a dull blade compared to Jackson’s and Stewart’s finely-honed scimitars.
But even so, immigration is on Freitas’ list of six issues, although sixth, behind “Limited, Constitutional Government, Economic Liberty & Private Property, Fiscal Responsibility, Educational Freedom, Virginia Families and Second Amendment Rights.”
The verbiage with each sounds like a position paper from The Heritage Foundation.
Here’s Freitas on immigration:
As a sovereign nation, we have an obligation to secure our borders. Our immigration system must be reformed to allow for safe and sensible legal immigration. We cannot allow for processes that do not take into account the best interests of our citizens. The current system has allowed terrorists and criminals to step in front of honest immigrants seeking to assimilate into our society. Nick supports both strengthening our border security and adopting merit-based immigration policies.
Big League Politics noted that Freitas says he wouldn’t want to prosecute municipalities that ignore federal immigration law, evoking the specter of a gun-grabbing Clinton Administration:
If we ever, God forbid, had a Hillary Clinton presidency, and they passed federal gun bans, when a sheriff … refuses to enforce it, the federal government is going to go in and put that person in jail
[Va GOP Primary: Freitas Tells Voters He Will Ignore Federal Immigration Laws, March 20, 2018].
That sounds like the outgoing House Speaker, not the King of Late Night Twitter. Sad!
To quote Joe Louis, Freitas can run but he can’t hide.
The Associated Press cast its story about the recent debate between the three this way: “Loyalty to Trump key focus of Virginia GOP Senate debate.” [April 19, 2018]
Get used to it, Swampsters. Virginia’s GOP is Trump’s GOP—and so is America’s’
