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Swamp Drains Into Virginia as Democrats Make it a Solid Blue State

Swamp Drains Into Virginia as Democrats Make it a Solid Blue State

Did the Republicans lose Virginia forever?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkRff4jlN7o

The transformation of Virginia has completed. The DC swamp migrated and turned the state solid blue after Tuesday’s elections.

Democrats will have full control of Virginia for at least the next two years. The first time in 26 years.

It may not surprise people, though. The Republicans had a slim majority in Virginia’s House and Senate.

After all, Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam escaped one scandal after another pretty much unscathed. A yearbook photo showed one man in blackface and another in a KKK robe. Northam admitted he was the one in blackface, but then recanted.

The other scandal was when Northam supported a bill to make it easier for women to have “an abortion up to the moment of delivery.”

We have not heard much about Democratic Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax. Right after Northam’s blackface scandal, women accused Fairfax of rape and sexual assault.

There have been signs of a possible blue Virginia. This election solidified that change:

Suburban voters turned out in big numbers to back Democratic candidates, continuing a trend of once GOP-friendly suburbs turning blue. This is the third election in a row in which Virginia Democrats made significant gains since President Donald Trump was elected.

Juli Briskman, the woman who flipped off President Donald Trump’s motorcade, defeated “Republican incumbent Suzanne Volpe to serve as the Algonkian District supervisor in Loudoun County, Virginia.”

Briskman lost her job due to her actions but received a lot of support. Someone even set up a GoFundMe account for her. She said it’s a possibility she’d flip off Trump again.

Back in 2017, Republicans won Virginia’s House after David Yancy’s name was drawn out of a bowl.

Shelly Simmonds decided to challenge Yancy again. This time she won to represent House District 94.

With the party in full control, the Democrats have “promised swift action” on their leftist progressive goals. These include “loosening abortion restrictions, expanding Medicaid, increasing gun control, and raising the minimum wage.”

House Majority Leader Todd Gilbert warned the incoming Democratic majority could erase the gains made by the GOP to keep Virginia business-friendly:

House Majority Leader Todd Gilbert on Tuesday predicted that Democrats would pursue an “extreme agenda” that would undo Republican efforts to make Virginia a business-friendly state.

“Virginians should expect public policies that look a lot more like the train-wreck that is California than the Virginia of good fiscal management and common-sense conservative governance,” Gilbert said in a statement.

[Featured image via YouTube]

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Comments

Proof again you cant fix stupid.

    Stupid has nothing to do with it. 25% of the seats won by Democrats were unopposed by the GOP. The Virginia Republican Party left us twisting in the wind by not even bothering to field candidates. We can’t vote for candidates that aren’t there. The swamp lives in Northern Virginia, which does to the rest of the state what NYC does to New York State. I guess the RNC decided that they wanted to spend their resources elsewhere, so they have left us at the mercy of baby killers, gun grabbers and religious bigots. We will now be the California of the east coast. It makes me extremely sad to see my beautiful home turned into a third world sh*thole.

      artichoke in reply to phdwyphe. | November 7, 2019 at 9:21 am

      You mention NY. We’re trying to stay ahead of you on that. A year ago the Dems took over the Senate, having already the Assembly and
      Governor. And they’ve knocked down every common sense thing they could find in our laws in the past year. They did a kamikaze attack on religious exemption from vaccination and in one day, they passed a bill thru the Assembly, Senate and Governor’s signature to remove the right of religious exemption from vaccination from K-12. The Orthodox Jewish communities had been strongly against that change, so they did it real fast before even the news media caught onto it.

      Shouldn’t that violate an open meeting law or something?

      A Punk Named Yunk in reply to phdwyphe. | November 7, 2019 at 6:54 pm

      (Did it again – clicked the thumb-down when I was trying to click the reply button. 🙁

      I have the same feeling about NY. I was SO wishing for the republican party to field some genuine candidates for congress in 2018. In my district the republican did not campaign at all. No posters, no radio ads, just put her name on the ballot. I voted for her but it was a wasted effort. Similarly, the candidate for public advocate (whatever that’s supposed to mean). His three points were
      1. Defeat the deBalsio agenda (Mayor of NYC)
      2. Defeat the deBalsio agenda
      3. Defeat the deBalsio agenda

      How stupid do you have to be to imagine that will get you anywhere?!

The end result of the “throw them out” mentality. They did, and now we’ll see what happens next. I don’t think “conservatives” are going to like it very much.

Two blackface scandals, a sexual assault accusation, and post-birth abortion comments did zero damage to Democrats in Virginia, now a solidly blue state. https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1192070392573288448

Fen’s Law is proved correct again: “The Left doesn’t truly believe in the things they lecture about to the rest of us.”

The Left still doesn’t get it that the “gravy train” always ends up at a concentration camp.

    Welcome to California. You can’t vote for what is not on the ballot. And when it is on the ballot and we vote the “wrong” way, the judges “correct” us.

    Let it be noted that VA did not turn blue because of CA transplants. So you better get used to being told “you voted for it now live with it”.

    You may soon understand what it is like to be like most Californians who are not nut job liberals. People like me who didn’t vote for this in the first place and are fleeing the state. Maybe people will start blaming VA too for their own problems?

    All of these states flipping blue are self-inflicted. It has NOTHING to do with CA.

      No, Virginia turned blue because of federal employees and others dependent on the government for their luxurious lifestyle.

        Virginia42 in reply to bw222. | November 6, 2019 at 12:24 pm

        I’m a fed. I DO NOT vote blue. Neither do a lot of my friends/colleagues.

          Virginia, you are an anomaly.

          bobtuba in reply to Virginia42. | November 6, 2019 at 2:06 pm

          Somebody get Virginia into a lab for further study. It’s a unicorn.

          PrincetonAl in reply to Virginia42. | November 6, 2019 at 6:50 pm

          Thank you for your votes and support! We all appreciate it (and I feel for all the conservatives in VA today – had some tough losses in my state too this week).

          It’s true that the majority of government workers vote blue, but that doesn’t mean all do. In particular law enforcement and a few other areas are redder, and there are conservatives in almost every branch (but they are very seriously endangered in many).

          The overall issue – big government employees tend to vote for more big government because they benefit from it – is real but still I celebrate those on the inside willing to buck the trend – and expose the issue in Leviathan as well (we can have our own resistance too).

        artichoke in reply to bw222. | November 7, 2019 at 9:25 am

        I’d been hoping Trump would downsize the fed workforce. It would be easy: do a layoff. Last in, first out, by union seniority rules. Who are the last in? Obama hires. Find out how many Obama hires there are, then that’s the size of your RIF in that department.

        Oh well he didn’t do that.

      I feel you, Phil. The Republican Party left us high and dry by not even bothering to field candidates in key races, and the judges who approved redistricting in favor of Democrats didn’t help, either. I didn’t vote for this, but now my husband and I are stuck with it. We retired here because we love this state, but we may have to rethink our plans.

      artichoke in reply to Pasadena Phil. | November 7, 2019 at 9:35 am

      After the court-ordered redistricting, did the R’s have a realistic chance in districts where they did not run candidates? I’m not from VA so I don’t know.

        VaGentleman in reply to artichoke. | November 7, 2019 at 10:04 am

        In some cases, no they didn’t. But, I would argue that the current conditions are the result of not running candidates for decades and letting the opposition dig in. The only way to reverse that is to run candidates, knowing that the odds are slim but that it takes time to rebuild. If you withdraw every time you decide it’s hopeless, eventually you will not be running a candidate anywhere. The problem we have here is that RPVA has no plan to retake the lost ground. They knew 2 years ago that they were in trouble, and they went on as usual with no attempt to take the battle to the enemy.

    VaGentleman in reply to Virginia42. | November 6, 2019 at 2:47 pm

    In my district, the dem for the state house of delegates runs unopposed year after year. The republican party is non-existent in Northern Va. Even though I donate to the party I receive nothing in the way of literature (sample ballots, etc), just requests for $. The party seems to have decided years ago that they are going to lose and have gone into a bunker mentality. They have NO plan to take on the dems, and when they are in power they throw away the opportunity.

    But it’s not just VA. If you’re a conservative, the lesson of Trump is that you have to get involved because the republican establishment isn’t going to risk fighting for you. The second lesson is that the courts are nice, but the classroom is more important. The indoctrination of little leftists in our schools is the greatest threat we face, and we don’t do anything about it. (OK, we complain on internet forums and yell a lot.)

    Trump’s court appointments may buy us some time, but I’m afraid we will throw it away, just as we stood and watched the creep of socialism become a flood.

    FWIW, if you want an example of conservative stupidity: A shooting buddy (who may not be after today’s conversation) bought 3 guns last year, but can’t be bothered to contribute to any gun rights groups. The price of a box on 9mm ($11) is too much to ask. But boy was he pissed today about the election results. We had a conversation. Unfortunately, he is more the norm than the exception. You can’t take back a country with that as your army.

      I learned this first hand in my state. I decided to try to do something about it, and ran for the County Committee – it was very easy because I was unopposed.

      It was the proverbial country club – they got together once a month at a restaurant meeting room, ordered dinner, and talked about the politics of the day, and tut-tut’d anything “unseemly.” They would receive candidates to practice their stump speech, and candidates for the higher party positions. I asked “What are we doing to organize the towns? What are we doing to recruit activists to stand at the polls?” It was like EF Hutton talking – the room stopped, and I was “informed” that “we don’t do that – that’s the candidates’ job.” And having watched the towns operate, it was clear that permeated the party. Then they “tut tut” about how we don’t have GOP representation on School Boards, Planning Boards, and Town Councils/Selectmen. Gee, I wonder why!

      As time went on, I ran for Area Vice Chair of the party, and won by one vote (which means over half of my own county committee voted against me). I was given an Area Vice Chair Handbook, which was ok – mostly training stuff from the National GOP. But there was a set of bylaws which said that all 5 Area Vice Chairs had to fundraise at least $5k/year from more than 100 donors. Ok, so I put together a raffle for tickets to a local cruise trip, and sold them at every committee meeting and candidate office I could get too. I raised $6500 after paying for the cruise tickets. Then I found out that none of the other 4 Area VC’s did any fund raising – they just ignored it. When I brought this up to the Chairman, he said, “yeah, they don’t have to do that.” I asked what do they do then? “They go to dinners every month.” I was trying to build town committees, organize poll watchers & sign holders, and recruit candidates, and they attended dinners.

      I finally gave up, changed my registration to “Undeclared,” and ran for Supervisor of the Checklist – the people who register people to vote in our state. I held it for 2 six year terms, then let it go. I shake my head at the state committee and how it actually functions, as in, it doesn’t.

        bhwms in reply to bhwms. | November 7, 2019 at 12:52 pm

        I should correct the record here – I changed my registration to Undeclared to protest Senator Ayotte (McCain-NH) repeatedly doing something stupid – that being listening to John McCain instead of her own constituents. She ended up losing to Hassan by 1000 votes in 2016 – there were 8000 out-of-state student (“Drive By”) registrations in NH, something she refused to take a stand against as NH AG.

          artichoke in reply to bhwms. | November 7, 2019 at 5:31 pm

          The McCain party lol. Do we intentionally lose? Because the Dems are quite energetic and aggressive, relentless.

theduchessofkitty | November 6, 2019 at 11:51 am

If you’re a Conservative or Republican in VA, move here to Texas. We’ll gladly welcome you as you help us kick the transplanted Californians down to size.

    If you look at the net differential between Californians moving into TX vs Texans moving to CA, it doesn’t come close to explaining the shift in politics. Those Californians moving to follow their employers Amazon, Apple and other Silicon Valley tech firms who were bribed by Texas Republican governors offering tax incentives and bonuses are self-inflicted. I guarantee you that the rest are largely at least as “conservative” (whatever that means these days) as most Texans. People like YOU are a very big problem.

      Tom Servo in reply to Pasadena Phil. | November 6, 2019 at 1:56 pm

      dude, California is dying. Don’t take it out on everyone else. It’s not our fault.

        You should be listening to Rush’s show right now. Several callers are echoing my point, the it’s the Republicans who are surrendering VA, TX, AZ and others. The voters are now just discovering what we in CA discovered, that there is no such thing as a Republican party. They are handing everything over to the Dems.

        Trump needs to be re-elected if for no other reason than to build a new party. Find enough believers and that party will be the permanent majority party.

        The surest way to keep losing is to keep blaming everything on the wrong things. California is a total disaster because the REPUBLICAN PARTY destroyed it by abandoning it.

        No one is more open borders than the TX GOP. Accept that premise and maybe Texas can be saved. To me, TX is just CA five years ago.

    Gremlin1974 in reply to theduchessofkitty. | November 6, 2019 at 12:12 pm

    LOL, I was just thinking; “Well at least that means they won’t be moving to Texas or the deep south yet.

    Isn’t Texas in serious danger of following Virginia’s path, what with demographic shifts and and unending migration of transplanted Dhimmi-crats from other states?

    That ethnic poseur and transparent empty-vessel demagogue, Robert O’Rourke, very nearly won a U.S. Senate seat in Texas would seem to attest to the seriousness of the problem.

      randian in reply to guyjones. | November 6, 2019 at 9:48 pm

      Texas is pretty much doomed because of Mexican immigration. Houston went solid blue when they imported 50,000 Democrats (aka former residents of New Orleans).

    healthguyfsu in reply to theduchessofkitty. | November 6, 2019 at 3:12 pm

    I’m born and raised Virginia, but I was in Texas for a little while in San Antonio and Fort Worth. I enjoyed it but moved back home to be closer to aging family. I may consider a move back when the family either passes on or moves out with me.

Virginia can no longer be considered a southern state. Northern Virginia is filled with elites (federal employees, lawyers and others who are dependent on the government for their income) and the poor. Northern Virginia is a Socialist’s (Democrat’s) dream – virtually no middle class.

    alaskabob in reply to bw222. | November 6, 2019 at 12:34 pm

    Actually more like the “old” South but expanded… the elite and the rest sharecroppers and indentured servants. The plantations are now cities.

JustShootMeNow | November 6, 2019 at 12:05 pm

Will the leftist flood into VA and WV expect Highly Taxed Gun-Free zones.

JustShootMeNow | November 6, 2019 at 12:06 pm

** With

NOVA is the home of the swamp. Virginians better get ready for higher taxes and tolls, and a bunch of wacky laws that defy logic.

    To be more specific, a whole bunch of laws and regulations that the people in middle and south VA are going to have kittens over. I wonder how long it will take the Dems to spike concealed carry licences, regulate gun sales out of the state, tilt the property tax to weigh heavier on southern rural areas, start billion-dollar railroad lines that only benefit NoVA (and spend the money up front), etc…

/It’s just another example of the weakness of the Republican Party as an institution – the candidates, the campaign advisors, the utilization of resources – all poorly managed by overpaid, self-serving worms.

Like it or not, there’s Donald Trump or there’s total progressive democrat control of the country.

Pick a side.

I predict one early piece of legislation in Virginia will be to ramp up voting fraud to Third World levels. The voters in Virginia will soon see a massive expansion of the absentee ballot system or perhaps something like “ballot harvesting”. One lesson the Democrat Party learned in the People’s Democratic Republic of Kalifornia was to rig the system so that the voters no longer have a say. As a result no matter how bad it gets in the PDRK the voters are increasingly helpless to do anything about it. Virginia will soon be in the same sinking ship.

    I’m an election officer in VA, so I will be able to see those changes in real time.

    Currently, we have “Voter ID”, but it’s muted, and only good for verifying that the person in front of you is on the picture. The only IDs not accepted are out-of-state ID and commercial IDs like a Sam’s Club Card. The real fraud would be detected at registration, and that’s a joke due to Motor Voter. We only check that they can tell us their name and registered address.

    Currently, it’s a weird thing – Absentee ballots are discouraged and must be substantiated, and early voting is restricted to “in-person absentee” subject to the same absentee restrictions plus date and time restrictions – that voting ends the Saturday before. Nearly all voting is on election day.

    BTW, I got into this because I missed being able to vote in 2016 – I was directed at literally the last minute to work out of the country late Saturday before election day and could not mark a ballot after 4 PM the Saturday before the election.

      Close The Fed in reply to jeffweimer. | November 6, 2019 at 7:11 pm

      Fortunately, your situation on last minute voting is the rare exception.

      Very definitely negatives attend early voting.

      1. Politicians have to front weight and sustain their efforts over the weeks of early voting.

      2. Gives dems plenty of time to wring every last ballot from the infirm and the indifferent. Getting votes from the indifferent requires a lot of time, and the extra voting time gives it to dems.

      3. The indifferent are less informed, so we get a boatload more of uninformed voters.

      4. Reduces community traditions, which we already have plenty of.

      Just a jumping off point here.

Virginia was lost years ago.

The siren screaming to the heavens was when Governor Blackface and Lt Governor Rapist were BOTH allowed to remain in office.

So. Much. Winning.

I wonder when the republicans are going to get sick of all this winning?

2020 is going to be a real shit-show.

    Barry in reply to coolway. | November 7, 2019 at 1:24 am

    Oh, here’s coolway to impart what little wisdom a small brain is capable of.

    What brilliant comments it makes!

    Why, if we’d just elect Mitt Romney it would all be fine.

wonder how many day voters they got

Sad day for us in Virginia.

I saw Yancey at the polls last night and wished him best of luck.

I thought there were like 24 seats where Democrats were the only one running. No GOP candidate. Kinda pathetic, but likely wouldn’t even have mattered. Virginia wants to be New Jersey, so be it.

The national Republican party, and the Republican Party of Virginia gave up on the Commonwealth years ago. It’s time for leadership changes in the RPV. Failing that, we need a viable alternative party.

Now the Commonwealth will be wealth common to the ruling class only.

Today I am ashamed to call myself a Virginian.

NOVA is totally blue and accounts for a large proportion of Virginia’s population. Add to that Richmond (the city, not the surrounding counties) and Tidewater, and it’s not hard for the Democrats to win the state. The GOP didn’t run candidates in these districts because there is no point in spending time, effort and cash to win 35% of the vote. The statewide candidates don’t spend the effort in those districts because they believe that the number of red votes in those blue districts aren’t worth the effort (they might be wrong but that’s the judgment they’ve made).

Virginia was never really ‘red’, it was at most pink and that only for a while. The rural counties don’t have enough population to counter the three major population centers.

That’s the real problem for the Pubs: as America becomes increasingly urbanized, it’s easier for Dems to win a state. That will be the problem in Texas in the near future for example.

I don’t have answers; I just see the problem.

    VaGentleman in reply to stevewhitemd. | November 6, 2019 at 5:26 pm

    I agree that those areas are blue. I do not agree that is not worth the time to challenge them in those areas.

    1- Money that they don’t have to spend in NOVA is money they can spend to flip other areas.

    2- I believe we have the better solutions and message. If we don’t compete our message is not heard. Is our message so weak that we cannot carry an election with it? If so, we need to go home now.

    3- RPVA played defense for decades, and this is the result. We Need Offense!

    4- having candidates in NOVA would force the RPVA to actually produce results. Currently it’s too easy for them to declare an area off limits and then focus on easy victories. It also fosters a losing mindset – and you can’t win with a losing mindset.

      You assume you can vote your way out of this.

      When commies take over there is no voting your way out, and you are damned close to that now.

Trump and the senate repubs could probably turn it red fairly quicklyn if they want.
Move all those Departments (ed, energy etc) out of DC and splinter them into the liberal democrat ghetto inner cities under the theory that putting them closer to their actual clients AND helping find jobs for inner city residents would be like tossing acid into the faces of the swamp creatures.
Make it mandatory that no jobs will be in or around DC and the swamp critters either have to move (with enough jobs getting splintered out the value of their houses might drop like a rock also and that’d be a win)or quit. No early retirements or buy outs.
You think those swamp critters want to go to Louisville, St. Louis, Detroit, and other democrat ghettos?

notamemberofanyorganizedpolicital | November 6, 2019 at 9:31 pm

I blame the VA KKK Govenor. And those Dems in elephant skins.

Donald Trump Jr. On Who His Favorite Democrat Is: ‘Mitt Romney’ HA!

It’s forever as long as the FailCons want to keep it that way. Close and disband 2-3 social work Federal agencies (dept of Education 1st, then perhaps Labor) & the balance is even. Reverse VA’s mass felon amnesty and voting reinstatement that’s the margin for Rs. Cut down on mass immigration and the balance is stable.

Ya think David French & the Commentary crowd would do ANY of that if they could? Of course not. Good riddance, they were never friends.

^^ 4Fun above has an excellent supplement: Other agencies that shouldn’t be closed and disbanded can be spread out into the places they regulate. Not every agency and not every job type should be moved, you need specialized talents for some jobs, and some types of government require most staff to be in a central office near other gov functions. Some, not most.

Virginia has been blue ever since the lemmings working for the government took over northern Virginia.

I hate to say I told you so, but I’ve been warning people this was coming for years.

The liberal populations of northern Virginia, the Richmond area, and the poorer areas of Hampton Roads now outnumbers the rest of the state. This is going to continue into the foreseeable future as A) the federal government continues to grow and more DC swamp rats establish themselves in the northern Virginia DC suburbs B) More and more liberals fleeing their own oppressive policies in New England states continue to relocate to Virginia and merrily engage in turning it into exactly what they just escaped from and C) people like me flee into Free America, further reducing the numbers of conservatives in the state.

Virginia is lost to Republicans forever and is not coming back.

The really sad thing is that this disease is only going to continue to spread. When Virginia because as oppressive as New Jersey or New York, rich liberals will start fleeing the state into NC and TN and KY, spreading the virus there too.

At some point, there won’t be any place left for freedom loving people to flee to.

Thankfully, I’m pretty sure that won’t happen until I’m long gone, because it isn’t going to be a fun time for humanity.

Anyway…gotta run. I need to start preparing for my move to Tennessee.

1. Northern Virginia and the major college towns are part of Greater Fedlandia, all dependent upon federal redistributive policies for highly privileged qualities of life funded by taxpayers. Everybody — from the government workers and contractors, to the lawyers, consultants and activists, to the restaurant waiters and local businesses — understands that. The Republican Party’s opposition to Big Government must overcome this rank self interest. IMO, the only appeals that can compete must be grounded in the threats to personal liberty, family and greater prosperity posed by the Progressive Ascendancy imposed through Big Government.

2. According to one source, immigration into VA has increased the foreign born population from 1 in 100 in 1970 to 1 in 6 today. That’s 12% of the population. And higher if the children of foreign born persons are included. Many have been imbued with progressive propaganda. Even the citizenship ceremony at Monticello this past July 4 was transformed into a bit of a progressive pep rally. As one new citizen remarked, “It’s our responsibility to fight so that no child is locked in cages and fight for climate justice, racial justice, sexual justice and justice for everyone.” How “Woke;” he learned his lessons well. But Republicans can still compete with the vote of legal immigrants by emphasizing economic opportunity and shared conservative (family) values.

3. “Charlottesville” has become a rallying cry for Progressives that also carries emotional appeal in the Virginia suburbs — many of whom are graduates of UVA or have children who went to UVA. Republicans/conservatives in Virginia are identified with (anti-immigrant) white supremacists and neo-Nazis, and no one in party leadership has fought back against that slander. Northam was happy to benefit from a thoroughly despicable ad depicting Gillespie supporters as a white guy in a pick up truck driving around a peaceful neighborhood looking to run down a United Nations of recent immigrant children. Northam took five days to “condemn” the add (maybe he was at a costume party?). The newly elected progressive Commonwealth’s Attorney in Albemarle County used video of the infamous neo-Nazi torch light rally to condemn the Republican Comm Atty who prosecuted some of the people in the video. Leaders need to “call bull$%!#” on this.

4. The RPV needs to go back to First Principles. Why are we conservatives and Republicans? We believe in individual liberty, economic opportunity, property and free enterprise, social dynamism, human dignity and personal responsibility that is a necessary price we pay for those rights and privileges. We believe in that individuals have the right to define themselves by their conduct and character, not by conformity to some rigidly imposed stereotype of identity. We believe in the true tolerance of living side-by-side peacefully with those with whom we vehemently disagree. We believe that the Constitution reflects and protects these rights. Progressives believe in none of these principles. So long as we remain at the superficial level of “issues,” we fight on their ground and will continue to lose to those peddling free stuff and rampant self-indulgence at seemingly no cost.

The news from Virginia is very bad, but ‘forever’ is a very long time. I am old enough to remember when Goldwater Republicans thought that conservatism in the US was lost to socialism ‘forever.’ Less than ten years later, Reaganism was sweeping the US: even young people began to self-identify as ‘conservative.’ By early 1992, many liberals were in despair and conservatives were exultant: the collapse of communism and Western triumphalism meant that radical socialism was gone forever. ‘Forever’ turned out to be not very long, and even the Marxists, crawling back out from their lairs resumed their conspiracy to corrupt the nation’s youth. Abandoning the field of education to them has created much of the mess we now have.

The worst thing Virginia Republicans could do—and have already been doing—is to give up. I have no idea what could cause a revival of conservative sentiment in Virginia. But political trends tend to be self-exhausting. An energetic opposition can turn this exhaustion into a sea change. My impression is that the Republican Party in Virginia has been its own worst enemy for quite a few years now. Moving to some (possibly imaginary) redoubt in the middle of the country won’t help. Standing one’s ground eventually might, though.