Is it March Madness or the start of one of the ugliest periods in Virginia’s history?
The Old Dominion is fast getting a reputation for the kind of politics of disenfranchisement, stubborn states’ rights-ism and glib constitutional arguments designed to attack the “enemy” a stone’s throw on the other side of the Potomac River that many thought had died out years ago.
Within two months of taking office, Republican Atty. Gen Kenneth Cuccinelli filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency for doing its job and identifying new pollutants (in this case, carbon dioxide).
Then you had “the Cooch” taking it upon himself while not bothering to inform his fellow Republican, Gov. Bob McDonnell, to declare as invalid any prohibitions by state colleges of discrimination against homosexuals.
Next, after President Barack Obama’s huge achievement (those are the word’s of London’s Economist magazine, not mine) of getting health reform passed, you had the Cooch, this time with McDonnell by his side, suing the federal government.
One top of this you have some very ugly incidents. After some yah-hoo Tea Party types in Southside erroneously posted the address of the brother of Democratic Congressman Tom Perrillo, the poor man had the natural gas tube to his grill cut on his screen-in porch. In short order, Eric Cantor, the House Minority Whip from Henrico County, claimed that someone fired a bullet in a Richmond office. City police, who, unfortunately, have a lot of experience with firearm forensics, said that the bullet was fired randomly.
Pushing this all along are such bigots as Glenn Beck egging on polyglot Tea Baggers and Macho Alaska Girl Sarah Palin coming on with such class acts as posting Web pictures of Democratic politicians with grass hairs around them and saying it is time to “reload” in fighting the creeping socialism of Obama. And this woman wants to be a national leader?
What is strange is that all this is happening during the administration of America’s first African-American president. There was plenty to bellyache about during the presidency of George “W” Bush but protests never got so personal or venomous.
As far as the “Cooch” goes, you have to give the man credit — he campaigned on exactly what he has turned out to be. Instead of working on its reputation as a reasonable, progressive state that’s a good place to raise and education family and do business, the Old Dominion is instead being the tip of the reactionary spear. And Richmond, once again, is becoming the capital of a new kind of Confederacy for a slipshod of states’ rights, self-appointed armed militia and zealots out to disenfranchise minorities although this time it is those with a different sexual orientation, rather than blacks.
All the anti-Washington lawsuiting brings back bad memories of Massive Resistance and other dark periods when Virginia led the way to hatred and bigotry. For a good understanding, look at a piece in Style Weekly written by a former Virginian-Pilot colleague of mine, Margaret Edds. Her commentary reminds us of some rather ugly periods of our history, such as one in 1924 when the General Assembly passed the Racial Integrity Act which made it a felony to marry someone with even a trace, or one-sixteenth, of non-Caucasian blood.
Or, consider another act by those descendants of Thomas Jefferson in state government.In the 1920s, they pushed policies for the state-sanctioned sterilization of people with low IQs, in a campaign so ruthless that it attracted the interest of none other than Adolf Hitler. Or, how the state officially harassed African-American lawyers in the 1950s who tried to get Virginia to go along with federal civil rights rules and Supreme Court decisions.
The new attitude is that we can pick and choose which federal laws we like –thinking that got us into the Civil War.
But is that what Virginians really want? Or have they been high-jacked by right-wing radicals?
There is evidence that the latter is true. The State Air Pollution Control Board, the citizen body that protects state air quality and works to enforce federal laws of the 1960s and 1970s, has distanced itself from Cuccinelli’s EP lawsuit. It seems that the “Cooch” didn’t bother informing them of the suit before he filed it. What’s more, there isn’t much evidence suggesting that any state college administration formally requested an attorney general’s opinion on the gay rights matter. It seems that the “Cooch” pounced a couple of days after a bill to grant such protection was tabled in a state Senate committee.
All of this is coming from a fractured GOP (see a Style Weekly story I did). It isn’t evident just how the Republican Party will react from these sudden wing nut plays. One would think that they might retreat and retrench in a more intelligent way. But that might not happen until people realize that something had to be done with health care and after some of these goofy states’ rights challenges get deep-sixed in a higher court. My fear is that reason won’t prevail until blood is spilled.
Peter Galuszka