McDonnell’s Power Surge: A kinder, gentler GOP takeover
-
As GOP resurgences go, this one comes quick and unequivocal, barely an hour after the polls closed Tuesday night. By 8 o’clock Bob McDonnell is declared Virginia’s next governor and the party heads are in full Republican surge mode, a la 1993, complete with cameos from former governors George Allen -- who won the Executive Mansion a year before the Newt Gingrich-led Congressional takeover in 1994 -- and ultra-conservative bad boy Jim Gilmore. But make no mistake, this is McDonnell’s party now. The ghosts from GOP’s past may have come to gloat on a night when Republicans swept all three statewide offices by a nearly 60-40 margin -- governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general -- but this is McDonnell’s victory, and he did it without cowboy-booting the competition. “Creigh Deeds said no; Bob McDonnell said, ‘Yes we can,’” echoes Republican Delegate Bill Janis, kicking off the election night festivities at the Richmond Marriott. “Yes we can!” The message isn’t so subtle. McDonnell and the Republicans managed to rebrand the GOP, moving the party away from its far-right social agenda and the anti-Obama catcalls of Fox News in a few short months. The new surge is all the talk Tuesday night -- the “warning shot,” crows U.S. Rep Eric Cantor -- but this isn’t the Allen-Gilmore lineage. This new party was message-oriented and respectful, eschewing the screaming conservatives on the Hill. It was polite, in fact. A billboard for Powhatan Delegate Lee Ware, who looks alarmingly like a younger Newt, whispered: “Principled. Effective. Courteous.” McDonnell never personally attacked Obama and at times agreed with his policies (charter schools, for instance) and even congratulated his Nobel Prize. Read more at StyleWeekly.com
Content and Comment Guidelines
As GOP resurgences go, this one comes quick and unequivocal, barely an hour after the polls closed Tuesday night. By 8 o’clock Bob McDonnell is declared Virginia’s next governor and the party heads are in full Republican surge mode, a la 1993, complete with cameos from former governors George Allen -- who won the Executive Mansion a year before the Newt Gingrich-led Congressional takeover in 1994 -- and ultra-conservative bad boy Jim Gilmore.