No charges in Allen-blogger incident

Story by Chris Graham

Charlottesville Commonwealth’s attorney Warner D. Chapman said today that he will not recommend that charges be brought against supporters of Sen. George Allen who confronted a liberal blogger asking questions of the senator at an event at the Omni Hotel last month.

“While several individuals could be charged with one or more misdemeanor offenses such as assault and battery or disorderly conduct, it is apparent from the evidence that no participant sought to strike or injure another person,” Chapman said in a statement issued this afternoon.

The Oct. 31 incident began when blogger and first-year University of Virginia law student Mike Stark approached the senator after a speech at the Omni and began to ask him a question about records of two arrests that have been rumored to have been related to the breakup of his first marriage.

An Allen campaign aide got between Stark and the senator, and when Stark continued to try to address his question to Allen, John Darden, a former Albemarle County Republican Party chairman, tackled him to the ground.

The incident was caught on videotape by two Charlottesville television stations – WCAV-CBS19 and WVIR-NBC29. Charlottesville police investigators reviewed both videotapes – which have been widely disseminated on the Internet.

“The recordings facilitated the process of identifying all the participants in the events and nearly all of the material witnesses,” Chapman said today. “In addition to the video recordings, the number and variety of participants and witnesses who cooperated with the investigation provide a basis upon which one may have confidence that the available evidence constitutes a full and fair record of the events under consideration.”

Chapman’s read of the incident is that “on the one hand, Mr. Stark actively and aggressively sought to approach Sen. Allen for the purpose of shouting questions at him in the full view of the assembled media. In doing so he made physical contact with members of Sen. Allen’s staff and supporters under circumstances in which a reasonable person would be concerned for the senator’s safety and unsure of Mr. Stark’s precise intentions.”

“A defensive reaction from one or more of these individuals was reasonably to be expected under the circumstances,” Chapman said.

“On the other hand, after the onset of physical contact between Mr. Stark and members of Sen. Allen’s group, it appears from the evidence that at least one of them, John Darden, began to react with anger toward Mr. Stark because of what he was saying, in contrast with the legitimate concern for the senator that may have influenced his initial reactions to Mr. Stark’s approach and demeanor,” Chapman said.

“Although Mr. Darden ends up on the ground with Mr. Stark, he quickly releases his grasp as another individual assists Mr. Stark to his feet and ushers him out of the building. In the Commonwealth’s view, this behavior is inconsistent with a conclusion that Mr. Darden intended to harm Mr. Stark,” Chapman said.

“As much as emotions may have come to influence the behavior and judgment of several individuals who were involved in this incident, the balance of evidence reflects that no one sought to hurt anyone. Under these circumstances, rather than urge that cross warrants be sought between the parties to the physical altercation that took place, the Commonwealth’s recommendation is that no charges be sought by law enforcement,” Chapman said.

 

(Published 11-28-06)

The battle for the heart and soul of the GOP

 

For a brief moment or two after the 2006 midterm elections, it had seemed that the Republican Party was perhaps going off its ideological moorings.

The talk was reaching the level of near-clamor regarding how the GOP was going to have to consider retreating from the right-wing conservative stance that had swept it into power in Congress in Newt Gingrich’s 1994 Contract with America revolution and George W. Bush’s 2000 and 2004 presidential victories back toward the middle of the road.

That is what the Democrats did, after all, to reverse the tide of Republican victories dating back a dozen years – riding moderates like former Reagan administration official Jim Webb and evangelical Christian and former NFL quarterback Heath Shuler to victories in House and Senate races across the country.

As long as Democrats control the center, the conventional wisdom was saying, then Republicans would run the risk of falling back into the permanent-minority-party status that defined their organization for 50 years before the mid-1990s Gingrich Revolution.

A new conventional wisdom seems to be emerging now, though – and the conservatives advancing it don’t appear to be interested in letting somebody else decide for them that their time has passed.

“I think liberalism lost big-time in this election – because basically no one ran to the left, and if they did, they didn’t win,” said Chris Saxman, a Republican member of the Virginia House of Delegates who is considered one of the Virginia GOP’s rising stars.

“Democrats realize that they had to go out and find moderate Democrats to run in these races to win – and that’s what they did. And the ones they beat – some of them were conservative, but most of them were the more moderate to liberal members of the Republican Party that the base didn’t support. And frankly, if the base isn’t going to support you, then you lose a lot of turnout factor there in those races,” said Saxman, a Staunton Republican who represents the Queen City and portions of Augusta, Highland and Rockingham counties in Richmond.

“I don’t think it was a bad year. A moderate Democrat will beat a moderate Republican. That’s basically what came out of that election,” Saxman told The Augusta Free Press.

One of Saxman’s colleagues in the House of Delegates in Virginia, Steve Landes, a Weyers Cave Republican who serves as the chair of the GOP caucus in the junior legislative chamber, welcomes the discussions over the direction that the party needs to take in the wake of the midterms.

But Landes also sounds a message that is being repeated by others nationwide – that Republicans still hold sway across a wide swath of the American political landscape.

“If you look at the Virginia map, for example, we still represent a large portion of the state,” Landes told the AFP, pointing to the results from Jim Webb’s Nov. 7 victory over incumbent Sen. George Allen, who lost by 9,000 votes of the 2.4 million total votes cast. “The problem areas we have are the urban-suburban areas – but I think you could make the argument that maybe it is those areas that are out of step with the rest of the state, and not the rest of the state that is out of step with Northern Virginia.

“There has to be a happy middle ground somewhere – and I do believe that for parties to be successful, they’ve got to find that happy middle ground. Not to get away from their basic philosophy, but to come up with solutions that can help solve the pressures that the people in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads and Richmond have,” Landes said.

“But that said, George Allen won 80 to 90 percent of the localities – but it wasn’t Fairfax County or Prince William County,” Landes said. “The Democrats seem to think that this will be their solution – but I don’t think they can win consistently unless they appeal to rural voters. And very few counties went to Jim Webb this time around.”

It isn’t as if conservative Republicans are necessarily desperate in their efforts to cling to power within their own party. But they do seem to be feeling a “sense of urgency” to get the party focused on what put Republicans in power in Congress and the White House in the first place, said David McQuilkin, a political-science professor at Bridgewater College.

“What I think they’re doing when they say that, in part, is they’re saying that it was the conflict in Iraq that did them in – and their relationship with that is what probably hurt them,” McQuilkin said.

“I think you’re going to see them try to really push hard on the issues now of true conservatism – and what they see it representing,” McQuilkin said. “There’s a true sense of urgency there that they have really gone astray – and where they’ve gone astray is by not being faithful to their conservative values. That’s caused immorality, that’s caused the scandals, that’s caused the move away from limited government.

“The conservative social values that they think are the heart and soul of the program and that they think are going to attract the mainstream of the American public have been pushed aside, they feel. And they need to get back to basics,” McQuilkin told the AFP.

Moderates in the Republican Party, for their part, feel that this could be a fatal misread of the ‘06 elections.

“The Republican Party is destined for minority status if we stay on the same path,” said Russ Potts, a Winchester Republican state senator who ran for governor in 2005 as an independent Republican.

“We used to be a party of ideas. But the only ideas that the people in that crowd are espousing is no, no, no,” Potts said. “Well, I’ve heard the no. You gave me the no. Now tell me what you’re going to do. If it’s no, tell us, then, what your alternative strategy is here.

“I don’t think there’s any question that this conservative, right-wing, extremist crowd in the Republican Party got their heads handed to them. People are looking for solutions, not these soundbite, hot-button issues like gay marriage that seem to be the only things they can offer up,” Potts told the AFP.

“It’s important that they acknowledge that one of the reasons that they lost was this social extremism,” agrees Jennifer Stockman, the chair of the Washington, D.C.,-based Republican Majority for Choice, a moderate-centrist GOP lobbying organization that has been airing television ads in markets on the East Coast pushing the idea that the ‘06 midterms made it abundantly clear that the party needs to move back to the political center.

“We know from previous elections that the party doesn’t want to hear our message. But I do think they’re pragmatic enough to know we’re the common-sense position,” Stockman said. “They just haven’t figured out the magic formula – the big-tent formula. There’s room for all of us in the party.

“Our position is, of course you can have differing views on very emotional personal issues. Some people are going to be anti-choice, some people are going to understand that it is going to need to be an option for families. Some people are not going to be believe in embryonic stem-cell research, others are. But these should not be the prevailing issues that define our party,” Stockman said.

“The problem is that conservatives operate as if they have a mandate – but they bullied the Republican Party into believing that they have a mandate,” Stockman said.

“That’s a big problem. The Republican Party has created this monster that is wagging the party by its tail – and it’s the tail wagging the dog,” Stockman said.

“The social conservatives are saying that they lost because social conservatives didn’t come out to vote. But that’s not true,” Stockman said. “The same proportion of voters were social conservatives in ‘06 as came out in ‘04 – between 20 and 24 percent. But of course they’re going to say that.

“They’re trying to manipulate the party to go further to the right. I don’t think the party can go further to the right, frankly. But that’s what they’re trying to do,” Stockman told the AFP.

Emmett Hanger, a Mount Solon Republican state senator who was briefly a candidate for the party’s 2005 nomination to run for lieutenant governor in Virginia, points to the party’s increasing fiscal extremism as another potential problem that GOP leaders will have to deal with.

“It appears to me that some of the more outspoken members of the Republican Party right now are becoming libertarian anti-government, really, in their focus,” said Hanger, a staunch social and fiscal conservative who has come under fire within his own party for his work on a bipartisan tax-reform plan with former Virginia governor Mark Warner, a Democrat, and his efforts to reach across the aisle to find solutions to funding crises in transportation and education.

“Something that has really troubled me with our party is the lack of true fiscal conservatism,” said Hanger, who chafes at the label of moderate that has been attached to him by his conservative critics and political pundits in recent years.

“The extremists are so adamantly opposed to any taxes that they would not support any form of tax for any type of service. And that obviously will not work in advanced civilizations such as ours – where for the common good, you do provide for services, certain basic core services, for your community, and certain basic infrastructure. To a certain extent, I think they’re on a page that’s too narrow in its definition,” Hanger said.
“It seems to me that the national party, in particular, has been trying to have it both ways,” Hanger said. “We look over the past year, and our federal budget has been out of balance somewhere between a billion and two billion dollars a day – and over the last six years, we’ve amassed an additional deficit of $1.6 trillion. I don’t think you’re going to keep taxes low – but at the same time continue to spend money. Those hard decisions haven’t been made – and I don’t think that’s fiscally conservative.

“I think we’re going to have to revisit what it means to be a fiscal conservative,” Hanger told the AFP. “And I think that that means addressing both sides of the budget – in terms of the revenues and the expenditures. And if you determine that it’s in the best interests of the state and the country that you have to spend certain amounts of money, then you have to be prepared to raise that money.”

Jim DiPeso, the policy director of the Seattle, Wash.,-based Republicans for Environmental Protection, points to a third area where Republicans seem to have strayed from their core beliefs.

“True conservatism means limited government, and in those areas where the government does have a legitimate responsibility, which in our mind includes environmental protection, focus on cost-effective approaches that will actually solve the problems that we need to face in this country,” DiPeso said.

What is interesting here is that President Bush has a track record of having worked in Texas during his time as governor of the Lone Star State to strengthen environmental policies – most notably in the area of wind-energy development.

“Under Gov. George Bush, Texas adopted probably the best renewable-energy portfolio standard in the country that has enabled Texas to become the nation’s number-one state in wind-energy development. And that came about because then-Gov. Bush and the Texas legislature worked through a very well-crafted piece of legislation that really got the job done. In some ways, it’s been more successful than the writers of the legislation thought,” DiPeso said.

“I think there are areas where the president and the new Democratic majority can come to quick agreement,” DiPeso said. “I think clean alternative-energy development is one of those areas. Extending the production tax credit for wind energy is another example. A national renewable-energy standard perhaps modeled on the Texas legislation. More incentives for alternative fuels. Strengthening of the efficiency standards for energy-using equipment. I think there are areas where Congress and the administration could come to quick agreement – and that would set a good tone and a pattern for coming to agreement or attempting to come to agreement on other issues as well.

“I think that there are some opportunities here. If the administration wants to go out with a bang, I think it would be well-served to take a look at these opportunities,” DiPeso told the AFP.

Whether or not party leaders will decide to address these internal criticisms remains to be seen. For now, the focus seems to be on “having a sort of circular firing squad – everybody going after each other over who’s to blame,” Bob Borosage, the co-director of the Washington, D.C.,-based Campaign for America’s Future, a progressive political-action group, told the AFP.

Among those who got dinged up in the volleys of fire was Kate Obenshain Griffin, who stepped down from her post as chair of the Republican Party of Virginia following Allen’s Election Day defeat. Former Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie appears to be in line for the job – but it is certain that there will be a good bit of hand-wringing over elevating Gillespie, who served on Allen’s campaign team, to the top spot.

“Kate Griffin bred dissension and divisiveness and mean-spiritedness – in-your-face, my-way-or-the-highway kind of politics. And worse yet, there was punishment for our members when they didn’t march in lockstep,” said Russ Potts, the Winchester state senator.

“The Republican Party has to be the big tent – and we have to have room in the Republican Party for John Warner, and we have to have room in the Republican Party for (conservative state senator) Ken Cuccinelli. Hey, I disagree with Ken Cuccinelli on everything – but I never demanded that he be ousted from the Republican Party because he voted that way. Which is unlike what his position is,” Potts said.

“I’d like to see an apostle of John Warner’s – somebody who believes that you govern from the middle – in that position,” Potts said. “I’d like to see a statewide chairman like a Haley Barbour – who believes in the big tent. Haley Barbour embraced Arlen Specter, and he embraced George Allen.

“That’s the strength of a party – the strength of a nation, the strength of an organization, the strength of a political party is the big tent. Being allowed to agree to disagree. Not governing in the fashion that the House of Delegates does – that punishes you and rips you off a committee assignment because you don’t vote a certain way,” Potts said.

“I would hope that it would be someone who can identify in broad and general terms what the party stands for – and then work to build a broader base, rather than the narrow base that it seems we’ve been working toward,” said Emmett Hanger, the Mount Solon state senator. “We’ve had instances now in our party statewide where if you can agree on a lot of things, but if you disagree on one thing, some of the party organizations want to kick you out of the party – because you’re not pure enough, you’re not really a Republican if you don’t believe exactly as I do.

“I would hope that we would have a chairperson that would be willing to be a party-builder rather than one who would be carrying an agenda for a particular segment of the party. Because clearly, if you want to go to extremes, you can’t win elections. I tend to be to the right in the Republican Party, particularly on social issues, but if you don’t reach out and maintain a broad base, it’s difficult to win elections across the state and across the nation,” Hanger said.

Two other casualties of the firing squads could be the two men currently seen as the top contenders for the 2008 Republican Party presidential nomination – Arizona Sen. John McCain and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani. Both are viewed as being more moderate and centrist than conservative – and thus both could have serious problems facing ‘08 primary voters, who will be disproportionately conservative in their political makeup.

“I think it is nearly impossible for Rudolph Giuliani to win the Republican Party nomination – simply because I don’t think he can move far enough on issues to satisfy social conservatives, who really turn out in large numbers during Republican Party primaries,” said Quentin Kidd, a political-science professor at Christopher Newport University.

“Giuliani has a long history of being pro-choice, pro-gay rights – all those litmus-test-type issues that social conservatives simply aren’t going to go for. He may change the way he talks about himself, but that isn’t going to hide the fact that he has a record of positions on these issues that a lot of social conservatives simply aren’t going to be able to accept,” Kidd told the AFP.

“Giuliani has a hell of a hard time getting traction in that party – in spite of the fact that he was the 9/11 hero,” Borosage said. “This is a guy who’s not only pro-choice and pro-gay rights, but he’s a guy who’s been pictured going to parties to dresses. I can’t imagine he gets past South Carolina.

“I suspect that the party elite will see John McCain as the oasis in the desert, the only hope that they have of trying to stanch the losses. But it will be interesting to see if McCain can gain the support of the Christian right that controls the primaries,” Borosage said. “McCain has kissed the ring of Falwell, folded on torture – he’s basically turning himself inside out.

“It’s rather shameless – the way he’s trying to pander to that support. Maybe that works – because I think he’s their best hope for sustaining the White House. And he’ll have a lot of corporate money behind him. But he’s certainly not the darling of the evangelical right,” Borosage said.

And that’s where it appears the power is in the Republican Party – at least for the time being.

“The fact of the matter is, Republican moderates lost seats in the most recent election. So they had very little influence in policy before the election – and they have even less after it. I think the social conservatives are probably stronger in the party now as a result of the elections than they were before,” Borosage said.

“The real division in the party isn’t between moderates and conservatives – it’s between the traditional small-government, low-tax Reagan conservatives and the more modern, newer, in terms of power, social conservatives,” Kidd said. “I think the Republican Party’s dilemma is this – social conservatives don’t mind government, and traditional conservatives want to reduce the size and reach of government as much as possible.

“I think that’s the fissure, the fault line within the Republican Party – and it will be interesting to see who is going to win that debate,” Kidd said.

(Published 11-27-06)

 

Right to left? In what direction will Dems take national politics?

 

It hasn’t been that long since some in the punditry and the blogosphere were speculating aloud about how Republican victories in the race for the White House and in Congress in 2004 might be signaling the dawn of a GOP century.

And it seems that now, instead of having learned our lessons, we’re going back down that same road again, speculating about how the Democratic victories in the 2006 midterms are signaling the dawn of a New Direction in American politics.

All you have to do is listen to Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat who is expected to ascend to the position of speaker of the House when the new Congress is sworn in after the first of the year, to begin to get that sense.

“The American people voted for change, and they voted for Democrats to take our country in a New Direction. And that is exactly what we intend to do,” Pelosi said after the election two weeks ago.

“The American people voted for a New Direction for a fairer economy. Democrats intend to work for an economy where all Americans participate in the prosperity of our great country,” Pelosi said. “And nowhere did the American people make it more clear that we need a New Direction than in the war in Iraq. ‘Stay the course’ has not made our country safer, has not honored our commitment to our troops, and has not made the region more stable. We cannot continue on this catastrophic path.

“And so we say to the president: ‘Mr. President, we need a New Direction in Iraq. Let us work together to find a solution to the war in Iraq,’ ” Pelosi said.

Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean sounded a similar message in his weekly radio address on Nov. 10.

“Americans across the country made it clear that they want a New Direction in Iraq and in the war on terror. Voters also made it clear that they want defense policies that are tough and smart. Our agenda includes a New Direction in defending America at home and around that world. We will listen to the military, take their advice, and ensure that our troops and agencies have the tools and equipment they need to defend our freedom. And we will keep our promises to our brave men and women when their service is done,” said Dean, a former Vermont governor and 2004 Democratic Party nomination contender.

“Americans also chose hope and opportunity over fear and cynicism, returning Democrats to power in Congress, state houses and legislatures with a clear call for honest, competent leadership, accountability and change in Iraq, and economic policies that put working families first,” Dean said.

“Democrats are honored by the trust voters placed in us. And on their behalf, we fight for the New Direction that Americans want and America needs,” Dean said.

This talk of a New Direction doesn’t sound all that much different from the talk that Republicans offered after recent elections about “the mandate” that they felt they were given by the American people to move the country in a decidedly conservative direction – despite their narrow wins in the 2000 and 2004 presidential races and the slight gains made in the 2002 midterms that could be attributed to a great degree to the fallout from the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

Even with the strong showing of Democrats across the country earlier this month, it wasn’t exactly of a resounding nature, by any means – indeed, many of their victories in House and Senate races, including in Virginia, where Jim Webb, a moderate Democrat who until this time last year was a Republican, unseated George Allen by 9,000 votes of the nearly 2.4 million votes cast, were rung up by the slimmest of margins.

“Until these guys actually present alternative ideas and legislation, we’re probably headed back to the GOP majority after two years of Democratic gridlock in the House,” said Steven Sisson, a conservative Democrat from Rockingham County who ran unsuccessfully for the 24th District seat in the Virginia Senate in 2003 and is the author of Adventures in Warnerland: My Political Soap Opera in Mark Warner’s Virginia.

“Watching the news, I notice a certain smugness with the Dems’ victory with these newly elected officials. They have not been ladies or gentlemen in their victory bravado over the Republicans,” Sisson told The Augusta Free Press.

Lowell Fulk, a moderate Rockingham County Democrat who came up short in his bids for the 26th District seat in the Virginia House of Delegates in 2003 and 2005, has noticed something of a similar trend himself.

“The Democrats, honestly, have to resist the temptation to think that people are rushing wholesale into the Democratic camp. What they’re doing is they’re looking for centrist, moderate, common-sense, fiscally responsible candidates. This doesn’t mean that they’re ready to run to Howard Dean. That’s not the case at all,” Fulk told the AFP.

What is emerging as the conventional wisdom on the ‘06 elections and what they mean as far as the current political landscape is concerned is that the voters were more interested in bringing the status quo back to the middle of the road than they were necessarily trying to move things to the left side of the political ledger.

“You hear some people saying, Well, this was a vote against the Republican Party, and not for the Democrats. That has some validity,” Fulk said.

“At the same time, this didn’t just happen in 2006. This has been building. If you look at the Republicans, the fallacy of attaining power is that you think you have a mandate to pull people one way or the other. They thought they could do that. What they lost sight of is, your responsibility is to represent,” Fulk said.

“I would say that it was an attempt to go back toward the middle, even if it’s a moderate conservatism as opposed to hard-right conservatism that has largely been the case the past few election cycles. Democrats are going to have to recognize that,” Bridgewater College political-science professor David McQuilkin told the AFP.

“What you might have seen is the election of some Reagan Democrats, as we might call them,” Virginia Tech political-science professor Bob Denton said. “Certainly, if you look at some of the voters, it seems that the Reagan Democrats came home. It’s interesting that even here in Virginia, Jim Webb, as a Republican, went back as a candidate to the Democratic Party. So it’s kind of interesting that Democrats in Virginia had to win with Republicans. It wasn’t portrayed that way, but that’s what happened.
“It’s going to be interesting to see how this shakes out. But clearly, being moderate, in the center, there’s no question that poll after poll shows that when most people identify themselves as liberal, moderate or conservative, most people are right there in the moderate center,” Denton told the AFP.

That’s where Staunton Democrat Lee Godfrey is. Godfrey is active in local Democratic Party leadership circles, but she doesn’t see herself – or the Democratic mainstream – as fitting into the liberal mold that Republicans want to put Democrats in.

“Liberals and progressives are always labeled as tax-and-spend – and of course that couldn’t be further from the truth,” Godfrey said. “I think especially now – some of those tax credits given to corporations and to the wealthiest will be withdrawn, but I certainly don’t see the Democrats raising taxes on the middle class. They’re going to fight for the middle class. That’s why I voted for them – because I am part of the middle class.

“Old labels just don’t apply anymore in the political realm. They always try to tag progressives and liberals as being a certain way, and that just doesn’t hold true anymore,” Godfrey told the AFP.

“A lot of the Democrats elected around the country this year are very moderate,” Christopher Newport University political-science professor Quentin Kidd said.

“If you compare this midterm election to ‘94, ‘94 was kind of an insurgency from the right – and so there were a lot of ideologically extreme Republicans elected who really felt empowered to take the Congress in a particular direction,” Kidd said. “The difference between that and 2006 is that a lot of the Democrats who were elected are actually more moderate than their party is. So in a funny sort of way, the primary race in Connecticut where Joseph Lieberman lost to Ned Lamont was an anomaly – because in most of the country, the Democratic candidates who were being nominated by their party were more moderate than the sort of insurgency from the left within their party.

“I don’t expect to see the Democrats push an extreme envelope on the left out of this election – simply because a lot of these people elected are more moderate. Take Heath Shuler in North Carolina, for example. The guy wouldn’t campaign on Sunday. Look at Jim Webb in Virginia. He’s really conservative on the issues. I mean, a year ago he was a Republican,” Kidd told the AFP.

“I don’t think you’re going to see the Ted Kennedy wing, so to speak, really take over and dominate, except on a certain few issues, like minimum wage, drug prices and legislation of that nature,” said McQuilkin, the Bridgewater College professor.

“Yes, the Democrats came into power. But now they have to essentially govern – and establish a program that’s going to allow them to be re-elected in two years. And if they get too far from the center, they’re probably not going to get re-elected,” McQuilkin said. “American politics is a centrist political structure and political system. You can have the wings from time to time dominate the political scenery, but generally speaking, oftentimes this provokes a reaction. And when it provokes that reaction, very often the majority party is sent out of power, and the other guys are put in – because the voters are tired of the confrontational type of politics that the extremes represent.”

A potentially significant development in the recent elections was the success of so-called Blue Dog Democrats – typically conservative Democrats from the South whose views on social issues like abortion and gay rights and in particular fiscal issues are very much out of alignment with their partymates from the liberal Northeast.

The number of Blue Dogs in the House of Representatives will grow from 35 members in the current Congress to 44 in January – and as Eric Wortman, the spokesman for the House Blue Dog Coalition, notes, that number does not include several conservatives and moderates elected this year who will not formally be members of the coalition but whose interests and ideologies are consistent with coalition members.

“You have Virginia, Montana and Missouri where fairly moderate senators are elected, and then you look at the House – not only the nine Blue Dogs, but others as well. You see it across the board. There was strong voter support for a voice of moderation,” Wortman said.

The coalition aims to be a moderating force in the House Democratic Caucus, Wortman said.

“The Blue Dogs have always been known as folks who are willing to work with anybody to do what’s in the best interests of the nation. And I think that means that when you see policy across Congress, it’s going to go through a process, and you’re going to see a moderation in the process – and you’ll see the best results possible,” Wortman told the AFP.

That is not just idle talk – while it might seem at first glance that the 44-member Blue Dog Coalition could easily find its voice drowned out in the din of the 232-member House Democratic Caucus, you have to consider that Democrats hold only a 29-seat majority in the junior legislative chamber.

“This is probably a good thing for the Democratic Party – because I think Republicans who have charged that Democrats are too far out of the ideological mainstream have been right, in a way. And so I don’t think it hurts the Democrats to wander back over to the middle of the mainstream a bit – especially if their electoral health is on the line,” said Kidd, the Christopher Newport University professor.

And even though the new Congress has yet to take the oath of office, the clock is already ticking in that regard – the 2008 elections, after all, are already less than two years away.

“You are your most vulnerable the first time you stand for re-election. And what Republicans should do, if they’re smart, is obviously challenge every one of those freshmen House members elected this year,” said Denton, the Virginia Tech professor. “If you give them a pass on one or two cycles, as we know, incumbents get re-elected at 97 or 98 percent of the time. The real challenge comes with your first re-election – and so with these freshmen, that’s going to be very important to them, for sure.”

The time to strike in that regard would seem to be now – given the uncertainty over the direction that the national Democratic Party is going to take.

“Back in ‘94, with the Gingrich Revolution, there was pretty much uniformity in terms of the various initiatives that were there. It was a common playbook, if you will. I’m not sure if we see that structure yet with the Democrats,” Denton said.

“Whether you’re talking about the war, taxes, impeachment, these hot-button kinds of issues, the Democrats right now, the new and the old Democrats, are saying two different things. They don’t seem to be in the same hymnal yet or using the same playbook. And it may take them some time for the dust to settle for them to come up with their priorities,” Denton said.

Sixth District Republican Congressman Bob Goodlatte agrees that the jury is very much still out as far as how the Democrats will be able to put together an effective strategy for governing.

“If they’re smart, they’ll focus on doing some of the things that are necessary to keep our economy growing strong – which would be extending the tax-relief provisions that we put into law that have played a major role in the very strong economy that we have today, and they’ll be a strong supporter of the president in our effort to crack down on terrorism,” said Goodlatte, who was elected to his eighth term representing Virginia’s Sixth Congressional District this month.

“But that remains to be seen. Some of the things that they talk about have strong public support, and other things I’m not so sure about,” Goodlatte told the AFP.

Staunton Republican Chris Saxman, who represents a swath of Western Virginia in the Virginia House of Delegates, sees the potential for an intraparty fight on the horizon in the coming weeks and months.

“The moderate Democrats who were elected are going to have to be willing to buck their own leadership rather than follow lock-step with their own,” Saxman said. “I mean, that’s what they had issues with the Republicans for – for following lock-step with their leadership in the Republican Party and the president. But are they going to be free to go their own way and vote their conscience? There’s no way.

“Do you really think George Soros is going to give that much money to the Democratic Party if that’s what they’re going to do? Do you think MoveOn.org and all of the bloggers out there are going to let them do that? Two words – Joe Lieberman,” Saxman told the AFP.

So what will all of this mean in terms of policy? That seems to be the $64,000 Question right now.

“I don’t see the Democrats as a body being able to move too far to the left. I know everybody says their leadership, their old guard, the people who are going to be committee chairs and Nancy Pelosi, are much more left than quote-unquote America is. But I don’t think the leaders can pull too far without their members following – and I don’t think a lot of these members are going to follow,” Kidd said.

“Winning is one thing – but are they going to govern from the center? That’s going to be kind of an interesting challenge,” Denton said. “Is there going to be a critical mass that they can demand conformity to some of the ideas and the notions? When you’ve got the leadership, Nancy Pelosi and some others, who are so much to the left, how will these freshmen congresspeople – the moderates – how will they survive in that environment?

“So, winning, yes – governing, different question,” Denton said.

“We may see the middle shift to the left somewhat from what we’ve seen it in the past six or eight years – but that shift is not going to be dramatic, and it’s not really going to change many of the things that are currently being done,” McQuilkin said. “You’re probably going to have a few of the tax cuts rolled back, but not all of them. You’re going to deal with some of the issues like the minimum wage and drug costs and things of that nature – and we might even see an attempt here on the part of the Democrats to begin to tackle the issues of the uninsured.

“The fact of the matter is, the Democratic Congress is not going to be able to force a program literally on the administration that’s going to be dramatically altered from where we are now,” McQuilkin said. “They’re going to probably take a somewhat go-slow-and-let’s-not-get-too-far-ahead-of-ourselves-type of approach.

“They’re going to continue to press on the issues of security – and at some point the issue of so-called cut-and-run that the Republicans have been very clearly trying to tag them with will come up. I think you’re going to find that there’s a fair amount of support for the military in Iraq – and what they’re going to try to do is find some means by which gradually, yes, we can extricate ourselves from that, but not anything of dramatic immediacy, which is what some are trying to suggest,” McQuilkin said.
“I don’t expect any dramatic revisions to the Iraqi policy. We may begin to hear talk of phased withdrawals and things like that, but it’s going to be slow, it’s going to be spread over time, and it’s not going to be something that’s going to be a dramatic issue in terms of, you know, we’re leaving tomorrow. I suspect that if we see anything at all that it’s going to be spread over a number of years,” McQuilkin said.

In this sea of political uncertainty, one thing is clear.

“The spotlight is on the Democratic Party right now,” said Fulk, the Rockingham County Democrat.

“I think the potential is there for the Democratic Party nationally and for President Bush,” Fulk said. “Both of them want to be successful in showing the American people that they are representing their best interests. And I think the potential is great right now for President Bush to work with the Democratic Congress and accomplish things in the last two years of his presidency. And I think his desire is there for that. And I think if the Democratic leadership is smart, they will work together with the president and really, truly make some gains.

“And that would be refreshing, I have to say,” Fulk said.

(Published 11-20-06)

 

America got what it deserved – the seeds of its own destruction

Column by Max Friedman

My most recent column in The Augusta Free Press, “The Most Important Election in Your Life” (Nov. 6), laid out in pretty clear terms what would lie ahead for America if the Democrats took control of either the House of Representatives, the Senate, or both. Now, with the results in, my late grandmother would have said – “God forbid,” but in Yiddish. My mother would have said “God forbid” in English, being a first-generation American, and no longer a greenhorn. Read more

What the heck just happened?

 

You listen to Bob Goodlatte, Republican congressman from the Sixth District of Red State Virginia, heading into his eighth term, finishing out his second two-year term as chairman of the powerful House Agriculture Committee, talk about life on Capitol Hill, and you realize pretty quickly that a sea change is on the political horizon in America.

“We worked well with Democrats when we were in the majority – and I expect that that will continue in serving in the minority,” said Goodlatte, who was re-elected last week in a race in which he once again faced no major-party opposition – the last time the Democrats ran somebody against Goodlatte was way back in the last century, in 1998.

“We’ll certainly stand up for what we believe in – but we’ll also reach across the aisle and make sure that on things that we can agree upon and can work on that I am a part of that process,” Goodlatte said.

“I was successful doing that my first two years in office when I was in the minority – including getting legislation passed that was important for my district. I think that will continue. I have a reputation for working with people who are willing to work together to solve our nation’s problems – and I expect that will continue,” Goodlatte told The Augusta Free Press.

You might have heard this already – that last week Democrats won control of both the House and the Senate for the first time since the 1992 election, the year that Goodlatte was first elected to represent Western Virginia in the lower federal legislative chamber; and that in Red State Virginia, George Allen, a popular incumbent senator who was also a popular former governor known for his reforms of the state parole system and the push to raise public-education standards, was swept out of office by a Democrat, Jim Webb, whose focus from day one of his abbreviated 10-month campaign was on effecting a change in direction in the war in Iraq.

Knowing those basic facts, we’re no closer to an answer to the question being bounced around since Election Night – namely, what the heck just happened?

“It’s going to take us some time before we will be able to fully gauge the magnitude of the changes that are taking place here – and how deep they’re going to run, how expansive they’re going to be, and in the long run, what can be accomplished as the result of the change that we’ve seen,” said David McQuilkin, a political-science professor at Bridgewater College.

“I think the change is momentous – because even though I’ve seen (syndicated columnist) George Will and (Republican National Committee chairman) Ken Mehlman follow the same line, and others have been trying to do the same thing, trying to minimize the Republican loss, saying it happens every 12 years, and this is how many seats usually change hands, I don’t think that bespeaks clearly enough of the changes taking place,” McQuilkin said.

“The pattern of the past 15 years is that we have a very, very divided electorate, the two parties have been extremely close, losses and gains have been offset on both sides by losses and gains. And you have a president who’s operating with a fairly thin majority in the legislative body – and yet been able to accomplish basically everything that he’s wanted to do. Now, you have a swing of 30 seats, and that is magnified tremendously by the narrowness of the political divide that has traditionally existed over the past decade and a half,” McQuilkin told the AFP.

Indeed, the string of narrow victories rung up by Democrats – though very much across the board – was also reflective of the divided America that we have lived in the past several election cycles. That was readily apparent in Virginia, where Webb, a former Republican who served as secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, defeated Allen by just under 9,000 votes of the 2.36 million votes cast – at the same time that a state-constitutional amendment to define marriage as being between one man and one woman passed with a solid 57 percent majority.

“I think if you had to give this election a title, it would be, The Tale of Two Virginias,” said Quentin Kidd, a political-science professor at Christopher Newport University. “Because I think the Webb victory speaks to this Virginia that we’ve all been talking about, this sort of changing Virginia – I call it the Periwinkle Pink Virginia. Not blue, but not cardinal red – kind of periwinkle pink. But the constitutional-amendment issue speaks to the traditional cardinal-red Virginia.

“And so in one election, we have an example of the potential for Democrats to make gains in Virginia, but also an example of just how far they can go,” Kidd told the AFP.

Brian Moran, the chairman of the Democratic caucus in the Virginia House of Delegates, reads the trends from last week in the Old Dominion as being generally very positive for those on his side of the aisle.

“This shows that Virginians will vote for Democrats,” said Moran, a Northern Virginia legislator who will be heading up the Democratic Party’s efforts to make gains in the Virginia General Assembly in next year’s state elections.

“Democrats have an appealing message to independent voters – of investments in education, and making them in a fiscally responsible way,” Moran said.

“This is proof that Democrats are successful when we are results-oriented – when we stick to the kitchen-table issues, demonstrate to Virginians that we are capable of leading and governing. And it’s proof that we can once again be a majority party,” Moran told the AFP.

That might be reading a bit too much into what happened in Virginia, to hear Bob Denton, a political-science professor at Virginia Tech, explain things.

“When you look at this race, it is about Allen in terms of his self-inflicted wounds,” said Denton, referring to the change in momentum in the Allen-Webb race that came at an August rally in Southwest Virginia in which Allen identified for those in attendance a Webb campaign volunteer recording the event on video by a racial slur – at a point in the race when Webb was all but down for the count, trailing by 16 points in the polls and hearing that the national party was probably not going to be devoting any of its resources to his election effort.

“That was clearly very important,” said Matt Smyth, an analyst at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “It certainly didn’t do the whole job, but it opened the door, and it allowed Webb to gain some momentum – turned out that that translated into some national money that went into advertising. And in the end it looks like Allen only outspent Webb by about a two-to-one margin.

“That all said, there were some national trends at play here as well – more than you’ve seen in a lot of recent Virginia congressional elections, anyway,” Smyth said. “Virginia is a reliably red state when it comes to presidential elections – but in terms of selecting their statewide leaders, whether it’s a statewide race for governor or a statewide race for Senate, it tends to be fairly independent-minded and not always tied to national trends.

“I think this year you saw a national trend that was much stronger than usual – that permeated a lot of races, a lot of districts, that it normally might not have – and I think Virginia was on that list,” Smyth told the AFP.

That national trend is forcing Republicans to look inward. Jennifer Stockman, the chair of the Washington, D.C.,-based Republican Majority for Choice, a GOP group that advocates a more middle-of-the-road approach than the conservative-first focus that the national party has adopted in recent years, said the results of last week’s elections should be a “powerful lesson” for Republicans as to what direction they should take in the future.

“In the past, the Republicans have sort of neglected or ignored that message – that they need to return to the center – because they’ve relied so much on the so-called base. I think this election was a whole new kettle of fish – and it was the moderates who defected and voted for the Democrats and caused these huge Republican losses,” Stockman said.

“If the Republican Party doesn’t recognize that fact, then we can forget the majority in Congress for decades to come – and we can forget the presidency in 2008. It’s a lesson to be learned – whether they learn it or not, your guess is as good as mine,” Stockman said.

The defeat of Lincoln Chafee in his Senate re-election battle in Rhode Island could be best illustrative of what Stockman had to say there. Chafee was bounced out in spite of data from one Election Day exit poll showing his approval rating among Rhode Island voters at 62 percent.

“It was the Republican label. Voters said, We’d rather have a Democrat, because we don’t trust the Republican agenda. It’s more about politics than it is about authentic policy,” Stockman told the AFP.

Chris Saxman, a Staunton Republican who represents a portion of Western Virginia in the Virginia House of Delegates, for his part wonders aloud about the decision of President Bush to replace much-criticized Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld the day after the election returns came in – and not instead before the election, when it could have made a difference in helping Republicans like Chafee who were put on the political bubble because of voter dissatisfaction with the administration’s handling of the war in Iraq.

“If it was negotiable to get rid of him, why wasn’t it done weeks ago? If you had to play the what-if scenario, you were losing in the first part of October, you say, we’re going to go on a new course, we’re going to get rid of Rumsfeld, why didn’t you do it then?” Saxman said.
“Unlike a lot of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, I’m not an expert on Iraq, they don’t know that they aren’t either – they love to think that they are, and they know better than Donald Rumsfeld. That’s laughable. But for all the sudden people to say, Oh, we got rid of Rumsfeld, for Bush to do it is just ridiculous – now. If you understood what the message of the election was, if you wanted to hold onto him and jeopardize the election, if it was that big of an issue, and could change the course of Iraq – it just seems ridiculous,” Saxman said.

The sack of Rumsfeld sets a tone, in Saxman’s mind, for how politics is going to be waged in the changing Washington environment – and as far as Saxman is concerned, it isn’t going to be pretty.

“For the Democrats to say, Now, we want to be bipartisan, it’s just a flipping joke,” Saxman said. “I mean, here they are preaching bipartisanship when for the last six years they’ve done everything they can to obstruct any kind of progress whatsoever by the administration and the Republican Party. So yeah, it sounds good, it’s a good soundbite for them, but are they capable of doing it?

“I don’t think the MoveOn.org are going to let them do that. They want out of Iraq now, they want the taxes raised now, they want to impeach the president now – and now they’re saying, We just went through a really nasty campaign, but we didn’t mean it. I don’t think (California congressman and Democratic Party House leader) Nancy Pelosi, for instance, is interested in bipartisanship. I just don’t buy it – after an election like that,” Saxman said.

“They’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting to be able to push their issues – and there’s (New York Sen. and 2008 Democratic Party presidential-nomination-race frontrunner) Hillary Clinton waiting in the wings saying, Guys, we’re not going down the middle of the road. Because that base, that party, is not going to let them. That’s been one of the problems of the Republican Party, too, electorally – you can get too far out into the extremes. And believe me, the leadership of the Democratic Party nationally is not the people who won those 30 seats to take control of the House,” Saxman told the AFP.

There are actually some rather strong incentives in place for Democrats to want to work and work well with the president and the Republican Party the next two years.

“It’s incumbent now upon Democrats to govern and lead in a nonpartisan or bipartisan and civil way. Democrats now have to stand for something,” said Moran, the Virginia legislator whose older brother, Jim, is a Democratic congressman who represents the Ninth Congressional District of Virginia in Washington.

“The Democrats are not going to be able to go in there and simply say, The policy is wrong, we’re going to change it. Because that’s not going to work,” McQuilkin, the Bridgewater College professor, said. “If they try that, I think what they’re going to do is end up with a complete and total stalemate – and if that happens, the Democrats will put themselves in considerable jeopardy, because rather than attempting to work to find a solution, they’re just simply magnifying the differences.

“The Democrats are going to face a complete re-election of the House in 2008 – and it is going to be the Democrats who have many of the majority seats up that they’re going to have to defend, not the Republicans,” McQuilkin said. “That could have a significant impact on how the voters respond. If the Democrats don’t demonstrate any willingness to solve problems, put forth programs that are going to alleviate some of the difficulties that many Americans find themselves confronting or having to deal with on a daily basis, then they’re not going to be re-elected.”

“Democrats, as the joke goes, need to be careful what they wish for. Having both houses now, they have the accountability and the responsibility and, in some ways, if you want to be somewhat cynical, taking both houses might not have been to their long-term advantage, because it does make them responsible, people will say, for the economy, change in war and things like that for the next two years. So it certainly makes them want to be more strategic, at the very least, it seems to me,” said Denton, the Virginia Tech professor.

“It’s not something that a lot of politicians on both sides of the aisle are unfamiliar with,” said Smyth, the UVa. Center for Politics analyst. “I think we’ll get into a situation where both sides sort of feel themselves out. President Bush has made it clear that he is interested in working together with the Democratic Congress, and he felt that they were interested in working with him, as long as it was toward some type of shared goal. You’ve heard already talk on both sides – Nancy Pelosi is talking about working in a bipartisan manner, you’ve the president talking about working together. So I think the parties are going to talk about it initially.

“In terms of actually getting sworn in and getting chairmanship of the different committees and that sort of thing, that’s something Democrats haven’t done for a while. So you’re liable to see some growing pains, I guess, in terms of being familiar with that – just sort of having that power that they once had,” Smyth said.

“I actually think they will work together. I think level heads will prevail,” said Kidd, the Christopher Newport University professor. “There will be some skirmishes, but I think the Democrats surely know that they can’t really change what’s happening in Iraq quickly – if there’s going to be change, it’s going to take a little bit, a few months, a half-year, a year.

“Bush, you have to remember, has a record as governor of Texas of working with Democrats – and there have been hints coming out of the White House that he’s going to moderate, that he’s going to try to work with Democrats. And I think that will happen,” Kidd said.

Bush, indeed, like the Democrats, has an incentive to want to work in a bipartisan manner.

“For presidents who are two years out, only two more Christmases in the White House, it’s all about legacy,” Denton said. “He’s going to be highly motivated now – because how he ends his presidency is going to impact how historians and people in general feel about him for years to come. So he is motivated – but his party members perhaps are in a difficult situation.

“It’s going to be interesting to see what his comments are – whether he’s going to be amenable, or will he continue to be somewhat stubborn, as he was on the campaign trail,” Denton said.

McQuilkin takes an opposing viewpoint on the issue of Bush’s willingness to work with Democrats – pointing to reports last week that made their way into the headlines amidst all the happy talk of bipartisanship regarding the president’s desire to push through the nomination of John Bolton to serve as ambassador to the United Nations and to push through legislation to authorize a controversial National Security Agency domestic-surveillance program before Democrats assume control of Congress after the first of the year.

“The question underlying all this talk about the president being willing to work in a bipartisan manner is – is he going to be willing to do so, given his past political indications, given his personality?” McQuilkin said. “He’s proven himself to be extremely combative. He’s proven himself to be highly unwilling to work with anybody who he disagrees with. He’s proven himself to be extremely stubborn and unyielding on any point – because he believes himself, whether he is or is not, he believes himself to be right, and he has the real insight as to what’s going on. Time has proven that that is not necessarily true – but George Bush believes it.

“The administration is going to try to tie the hands of the Democratic majority as tightly as they can before this Congress adjourns – so that they have as much in place and as much power and influence and authority as they can possibly get, and have things already in motion so that they can continue to function, leaving the Democrats largely grasping at air. We’re seeing that already,” McQuilkin said. “So it’s going to take the Democrats a while to begin that process of trying to resolve things and trying to come up with new policies and trying to come up with new approaches – at which point you’re going to have now the White House essentially having that interim period to bring the country back to, I’m President Bush, and I’m right – and to reintroduce and re-establish the ideas of stay-the-course, we-can’t-give-up, et cetera.

“The American public says, We don’t want that – but I think you’re going to see Republicans try to convince them otherwise,” McQuilkin said.

You get a sliver of a sense of that when talking to Goodlatte about what he sees coming up on the American political horizon.

“Nobody likes war – and nobody likes a war that has gone on now for four years. But I think people also understand that it would be a big mistake to simply pull out of Iraq and see all of the resources that the terrorists are pouring into Iraq in terms of money and terrorist fighters and so on spread across the world, including the United States. We’ve been very safe for the last five years – and it’s in large part because we’ve taken the fight to the terrorists in addition to doing the things necessary to try to keep our country more secure,” Goodlatte said.

“This needs to continue in terms of conducting the war on terror – but we also need to do it in a smart way and in a way that adjusts our tactics and takes a look at the overall strategy to see where we might make some changes,” Goodlatte said.

“The most important thing is to understand that we’re elected to represent the people and to work with those who are elected from other parts of the country,” Goodlatte said. “So we’ll go to Washington and attempt to pursue a constructive agenda of promoting strong growth in our economy and making sure that we continue to keep our country secure and take the measures necessary to win this war against terrorism – and also to address some of our other concerns, like cracking down on illegal immigration, making our country more energy-independent.

“That agenda will be clear to the public – and if we can work with the Democrats, we certainly will do that. But where we disagree with them, we’ll certainly spell out our differences as well,” Goodlatte said.

(Published 11-13-06)

 

Can we all just get along?

 

The Shenandoah Valley is usually pretty tame as far as its politics goes – but even the solid Republican Mountain Valley has seen its share of contentiousness this political season.

To wit …

- One of the highlights of the Augusta County Fair this summer was an episode in which a Democratic Party volunteer offered a commentary to the mother of a fallen United States Marine that led to a verbal confrontation between Democrats and Republicans working the fair that had to be broken up by the county sheriff.

- Republican Sen. George Allen canceled on very short notice a scheduled August stop in downtown Staunton after costumed protestors gathered in the central shopping district to raise issue with his use of a racial slur to describe a campaign volunteer of Democratic Party opponent Jim Webb at an event in Southwest Virginia earlier in the month.

- That same day, Allen was confronted at another event in Staunton by a liberal blogger who asked the senator if he had “ever used the word ‘nigger.’ ”

- In a related happening, the blogger from the second Staunton incident, Mike Stark, a 38-year-old University of Virginia law student, was back in the news last week – after a question about Allen’s first marriage landed him on the floor of a Charlottesville hotel in the arms of a former Albemarle County GOP official who joined two other Allen supporters in physically impeding Stark from gaining access to the senator.

If this is the way things are in red state Virginia, it’s no surprise to hear that the rest of the country is clawing at itself to the point that we have to seriously begin to ask ourselves the question, Can America ever be one again?“It’s always difficult to make that kind of judgment around election time – because the rhetoric of campaigns, particularly within a few weeks of the election itself, is usually such that it generates polarizing feelings, emotions and attitudes,” University of Virginia economist David Shreve said.

“Sometimes there’s still a lot of flames burning after elections – and the embers don’t die out quite that readily. And that makes it extremely difficult for those who wish to try to build a consensus,” Shreve told The Augusta Free Press.

“You know during a political campaign that people are going to throw dirt back and forth. I guess it’s inevitable,” said Lee Godfrey, a Staunton Democrat who has been active on the front lines of the Allen-Webb campaign.

“I don’t know why that’s true – but it seems to be that way. But really what we need to know is, if you’re going to vote for somebody, where do they stand on the issues?” Godfrey said. “I think both sides are guilty of not making that clear – where they stand on a particular issue. They seem to get desperate, start throwing things at each other, name-calling and all that kind of stuff. We’ll never solve anything if we don’t start talking about what’s really important – and that’s the issues, and solutions.

“That’s what we want to hear about. I don’t want to hear about the book. I don’t want to hear about Macaca. All this other stuff is just distracting,” Godfrey told the AFP.

Virginia Tech political-science professor Bob Denton is more of a realist when it comes to the discussion of this issue.

“I’ve got to tell you – I don’t want to be too much of a pessimist, but ever since the 2000 presidential campaign, I’ve never seen such polarization in my life,” Denton said.

“We’ve gone through six years now of highly intense politics – the names that elected officials call each other, calling the president a liar, just tossing around these kinds of names left and right. The decibel level is as high in this off year as it ever has been. And special-interest groups are playing a role now – with some of the corporate and advocacy advertising that we’re seeing. I think a lot of citizens sit down and look up at the sky, and they see these rockets going above them – it’s kind of like an air war going on up there above them. It’s all or none, left or right. I find it troubling – and I do not see it abating. It just seems that with each cycle, it is intensifying,” Denton said.

“After 2000, people talked about the red versus the blue – we were a 50-50 nation. And while that may be a little bit of an exaggeration, when we talk about issues – whether it’s stem-cell research, gay marriage, taxes, Iraq – there seems to be such a polarization.

“I really am concerned about this age that we’re in – this age of reactivity. And it’s hard to see the middle ground,” Denton told the AFP.“You’re seeing a pretty strong partisan breakdown because the stakes are just about as high as they get – control of both houses of Congress. I think because of that you’ve got that added feel of it almost being sort of like a zero-sum game – like the Cold War,” University of Virginia Center for Politics analyst Matt Smyth said.
“There’s always negative campaigning – there’s always a lot of division when it’s close. But this year, you’ve got not only the negative campaigning, but the unsavory aspects of campaigning that have come up this election season – the Mark Foley scandal, the personal attacks in the Virginia Senate race here. Those are the things that make it tougher to come back together and govern,” Smyth told the AFP.

“I don’t see it becoming less contentious,” said Bridgewater College political-science professor David McQuilkin.

“It’s going to be as contentious as it’s ever been, if not more so. I just don’t see the two parties kissing and making up – particularly when each of them sees the other as the enemy, as is oftentimes expressed, and given their unwillingness to work with each other, because they are the enemy, and they oftentimes vocalize it, and the fact that they just can’t seem to bring themselves to accept anything that the other party represents and stands for as being legitimate,” McQuilkin said.

“Look at what the president has been saying in recent weeks – vote for Republicans, because you lose when you vote for the Democrats. When you come out with that kind of rhetoric in the latter stages of an election cycle, and you come out that vigorously and that pronounced, there’s not going to be any real sense of willingness to be less partisan or to make up and work together,” McQuilkin told the AFP.

That willingness, some observers would argue, has been on the wane for some time now. Denton traces it to the 1988 presidential election in which Lee Atwater, George H.W. Bush’s Karl Rove, Willie Hortoned and card-carrying-ACLUed Michael Dukakis into political oblivion. Chris Saxman, a Staunton Republican who represents a portion of Western Virginia in the Virginia House of Delegates, thinks it goes back further than that.

“I think it’s more a function of the generations,” Saxman said. “The boomers were very polarized – and they’re now leading the nation. I think it’s a function of their idealism versus pragmatism – which is what my generation is more focused on.

“It’s going to be a time before we repair this breach. Hopefully it won’t take a national catastrophe to do it,” Saxman told the AFP.

Creigh Deeds, a Bath County Democrat who was within a dog’s whisker of being elected Virginia attorney general in one of the closest elections in Old Dominion history, dates the change in tone of contemporary politics to the election of Ronald Reagan – George H.W. Bush’s predecessor and George W. Bush’s political role model – to the White House in 1980.

“That was when we started seeing elections that began to really divide the American people. To their credit, the American people are resilient. At our core, we’re still Americans – we’re not Democrats and Republicans so much as we are Americans,” Deeds said.

“That’s the disappointing point to me – that so many people who are elected now are in the mindset that they’re elected only as one or the other. You might be elected as a Democrat or as a Republican, but at the end of the day, you represent all of the people. And as long as we don’t lose sight of that fact, we’re going to be all right,” Deeds said.

“When you call people bad names and go through the bad stuff of elections, it’s hard to recover sometimes from that. But you’ve got to move past it. You’ve got to move on. You’ve got to recognize at the end that we’re Americans,” Deeds told the AFP.

But being Americans, we have access to news 24-7-365 – on over-the-air and cable television, in newspapers and magazines, and on the Internet.

And the way those mediums are evolving, they themselves can be a source for contention.

“The media tends to report what they want to support,” Steve Kijak, an Augusta County Republican and conservative blogger, told the AFP.

“I hate to beat up on you guys, but when you’re in a 24-7 news environment, you’ve got to fill it with something,” Denton said.

“And that demand for content kind of invites comment, reaction, further reaction, all the talking heads – the Chris Matthewses of the world. And of course here I am talking to you. But you see what I’m getting at. Part of it is this technology and 24-7 environment is also playing a role to personalizing and keeping some of the arguments alive on a day-in and day-out basis,” Denton said.

The growth in influence of the media has made what had been for many years an exclusively Washington phenomenon – this political conflict that has us at each others’ throats right now – into something that has seeped down to the bare local level.

“At the federal level, we’ve seen in congressional elections and presidential elections this all is fair in politics kind of mentality – and it’s been somewhat of a perpetual campaign, in that people who are elected to office, it seems, sometimes forget that there’s a duty to serve once you’re elected to all the constituents in your area, not just those that are partisan and put you there. It’s something that I’ve been confronted with – I was in my last election – because some of those who are key players at the federal level in Washington who have become power brokers seem determined to spread that influence into state elections, and they have been reasonably successful with that,” said Emmett Hanger, a Mount Solon Republican who represents a swath of Western Virginia and Central Virginia in the Virginia Senate.

“These guys are pretty vicious, and it’s not about politics, it’s not about public policy that’s good for the country or good for a particular state, in my opinion,” Hanger said. “The essence of it is, whatever it is that you’re advocating for, it’s for clutching power, it’s for gaining power at whatever cost. And power is a goal in and of itself, rather than what it should be, in an ideal situation, that elective office is a platform to perform good – to serve your area, to institute good policy that impacts on the quality of life.

“Well, too often, I believe now, it’s more of a power fight in that it’s an end in itself – in other words, it’s not to be congressman so that you can impact the country for good, it’s to be a congressman so you can have power and prestige. And that’s unfortunate,” Hanger told the AFP.

The hard reality here is that once this becomes the way that politics are waged – once strategies aimed at building and exploiting divisiveness becomes the accepted norm – there is really no way to get the toothpaste back into the tube.

“As long as that type of campaigning works, whether it be negative or just spinning facts into things that are not very accurate, if it works, people will continue to do it, I suppose,” Hanger said.

“When someone hammers on you, then when you do come back, it appears that you are the one that’s going negative – you talk about what they said about you in some way. So it has to be handled carefully. It is unfortunate – but it’s a part of modern politics. Which unfortunately, I think, keeps a lot of very competent people that would be good for the process from coming out. And what you find instead is people who love that part of it getting involved sometimes who probably shouldn’t,” Hanger said.

“You couldn’t pay me to run for anything – not that I would get elected dogcatcher,” Denton said. “But you’re going to dig up the time I was in the principal’s office at 16 years old? Please. I lived through that once. I don’t need to live through it again – and in public.

“If I was one of these candidates, and I survived, and I would go back to the next legislative session, I don’t know how I could shake some of these people’s hands,” Denton said. “How do you say, Oh, it’s just politics? If you say it’s just politics, you’re saying that’s just the way it has to be played. And I’m not sure that I want to grant that.”

Saxman, like Hanger, admits that the divisiveness issue has been something that has entered into his personal thinking.

“The nature of what we do in Richmond when we’re there serving is very nonpartisan and bipartisan. And frankly, I was very pleased to see that. I wasn’t expecting that,” Saxman said.

“We all do get along. I count people on the other side of the aisle as my friends – legitimate friends. I play golf with some of these people, we spend time together socially. When we have losses in our families, we write each other notes from the heart. I’ve grown quite fond of some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. I disagree with them on the issues, and they disagree with me, and that’s just the way it rolls,” Saxman said.

“The closer you get to D.C., the more partisan it gets – because that’s just the way D.C. is. I often point out to people when I’m talking about Richmond how different it is from D.C. politics. We actually have to get things done. We actually have to go back and prove ourselves. And I think we’ve done a pretty good job of that in Virginia,” Saxman said.

“People ask me, Would you ever consider running for Congress? And I look at it, and I say, I don’t know if it’s actually not a foregone conclusion that it’s going to be that way for several more decades. I look at how remarkably unified we were after 9/11 – they all stood together and held hands and prayed and wept and sang hymns – and I look at it today and say, What happened? Is it all about political power? Because while some of the criticisms of the president and the administration are valid, it’s gotten to the point of satire. And I don’t get that,” Saxman said.

Our original question in this essay was – Can America ever be one again? A followup might be structured along the lines of – Can we all just get along?“I don’t think it’s going to go away until we have another generation of leadership in there that is going to look to reach across and do some meaningful things in politics and put some of these things aside,” Saxman said.

“Because it is getting in the way. It’s not just about making deals and compromising. A lot of these things, frankly, are too important to get lost in perfection. It’s not about what you want – it’s what you can get. And sometimes you’ve just got to go home with something good instead of trying to go home with something perfect,” Saxman said.

“My wife makes phenomenal chocolate-chip cookies, and we’ve gotten pretty good in our family determining which ones are really good and which ones are phenomenal. But guess what – they all get eaten. In the final analysis, no one says no,” Saxman said.

“It’s difficult to go home sometimes and say, We didn’t get everything, but we got what we thought was going in the right direction. You might take some wrong turns in life, but if you’re headed in the right direction eventually, you’ll get there.

“I think people lose sight of that sometimes. And it’s blinding our progress. Because a house divided can’t stand,” Saxman said.

“We’ll have to go to a period of time where we refocus on what it is we want government to be about and the political process itself,” Hanger said.

“I think we’ve had some of those dips in the past – but now, quite frankly, I guess it’s spurred on by the fact that in the past it might be once a week where there would be focus on it, but now, it’s constant. We have 24-hour around-the-clock news coverage that can put it in front of us all the time. We have popular shows on radio that constantly put things out there with their particular spin. And now we find that where it used to be more subtle, now it’s very overt and aggressive in terms of which side particular broadcasters are on,” Hanger said.

“Do we have to do it? Absolutely, yes,” Godfrey said. “What I like to tell people, and I really believe this – you know, they’re always trying to pigeonhole you, you’re either Republican, or you’re Democrat. And often, you lean one way or the other, that’s true. But what we all are are Americans. We all love this country and want what’s best for it – and to do that, just like in a family unit, you have to work as a community. You have to compromise, and you have to talk to each other.

“So I don’t think we have any choice – because we have a lot of problems to deal with, and we sure better eat some humble pie, and everybody had better get ready to hunker down and come up with some solutions,” Godfrey said.

“When you look at this Allen-Webb race right now, it’s pretty much a dead heat – and what does that tell you? It tells you that there really isn’t a majority one way or the other. It means that it’s time to recognize what the other side sees and wants – and come to some kind of compromise, some kind of middle ground,” Godfrey said.

“What was the latest poll – 47-47? I want Allen to remember that 47 percent of the people in this state support what Webb says. It’s important to remember that. At the same time, if Webb wins, it’s important for him to remember that 47 percent of the state support what Allen says,” Godfrey said.

While Saxman and Godfrey and others seem to be holding out hope for a brighter tomorrow, McQuilkin, for one, is of the mindset that we may be too far gone to ever be able to return to a point where we all can get along.

“It’s possible – but many things will have to change,” McQuilkin said. “We can’t continue to promote attack politics. We can’t continue to use wedge issues to separate out small groups of people against other groups of people. We can’t run policies that essentially pit one group of citizenry against another for resources – whatever those resources may be. We can’t continue to besmirch and ridicule and even to suggest illegitimacy on the part of the other group because we don’t agree with them.

“As long as you have that, you’re not going to change. Once we can get past that, then there’s a possibility that we can come back to civility and bipartisanship – true bipartisanship – in the political process. But right now, I don’t see it in the cards,” McQuilkin said.

“Too much is going to have to change. We’ve created now too divisive a circumstance in political activity – and those kinds of things are very, very difficult to overcome,” McQuilkin said.

At least for the foreseeable future, Smyth is there with McQuilkin.

“It’s one thing when you bash somebody’s immigration policy or their views on Social Security reform. Those are policy-related, and everybody expects to have those types of differences and occasionally speak strongly about them. But when you’ve got personal characteristics and personal qualities that are talked about, then instead of disagreeing with someone, you end up disliking them – which are two very different things,” Smyth said.

“American politics had gotten to the point where sometimes that line is blurred for some voters. In that sense, it’s going to make it a little bit difficult on the national level. The results of the election – whether Democrats take control of one house or both houses, or the Republicans manage to hang on – nobody’s majority is going to be that strong, strong enough to survive a filibuster or strong enough to just push through legislation,” Smyth said.

“In that sense, I think you’re going to see some gridlock, I think you’re going to see a lot more rhetoric than you’re going to see actual results,” Smyth said.

Denton, having trouble overcoming his nagging pessimism, fears for the long-term future of America.

“I don’t want to get too far out there – but that with the balkanization of America, in another 50 years, will we look like Eastern Europe?” Denton said.

“I mean, you look at America, both geographically and philosophically or ideologically, the Northeast, in its beliefs, attitudes, values and issues, is so different from the South, the Midwest and of course that Left Coast out there. I can see us becoming the Republics of America,” Denton said.

“I really wonder with the globalization, the shrinkage and the intensity of differences regionally, the reds and the blues, if we as Americans are somehow losing the notion of what it means to be an American. I would hate to see us go that route – but we may already be heading in that direction,” Denton said.

(Published 11-06-06)

 

The most important election of our lifetime

Column by Max Friedman

Usually I don’t ask or tell people how to vote. I can suggest to them why they should vote a specific way, but each of us has our likes, biases, misconceptions, wrong information, right information, or are uniformed and vote with a herd instinct. However, this election is different, and it will affect the very existence of America, and here is why. Read more

Warner rallies Dems in Staunton

Story by Chris Graham

Mark Warner has been down this road before – lending his name and expending his political capital to aid political protege Tim Kaine’s run at the governor’s job last fall.

The businessman-turned-Virginia political favorite son knows that there is risk involved to engaging in such efforts.

“If you feel like you believe in somebody, and you believe in their ideas, then you support them,” the former Virginia governor told The Augusta Free Press today after a campaign rally in Staunton.

Warner’s magic touch was key to Kaine’s comeback win over Republican Jerry Kilgore last fall. Webb could also stand to benefit from Warner’s active support – the Vietnam veteran and former Reagan administration Navy secretary is locked in a too-close-to-call battle with Republican incumbent George Allen as the campaign enters its final hours.

Warner spent the weekend traveling across the state to stump for Webb – and will continue his efforts tomorrow at events with Kaine and Webb in tow.

Warner, a one-time 2008 Democratic Party presidential-nomination candidate who decided last month against further exploration of a run at the White House, said what he likes most about Webb is his independent streak.

“What I like is the issues that he’s focusing on – how we change our national-security policies to make America more respected in the world, to try to look at the issues of economic fairness, to also make sure that we have a Congress that will do its job in terms of providing a check and a balance,” Warner said.

“I know at the beginning folks said this race wasn’t going to be competitive – just as Tim’s race a year ago, when folks at the beginning said that race wasn’t going to be competitive. I think you’re seeing a desire for change,” Warner said.

“I think in Virginia we’ve shown that Democrats are coming at issues from the center – they’re not coming at it from the political extreme. I think Jim Webb will be in the kind of mold that Tim Kaine and I have tried to move the Democratic Party. I think that’s important – I think that’s important not only for the Democratic Party, I think it’s important for the country,” Warner said.

Warner was joined at the event at Wright’s Dairy Rite in Staunton – a favorite political hangout for local and state Dems and Republicans over the years – by Brian Moran, a Northern Virginia state delegate who serves as the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.

Moran said Webb’s gain in the polls can be attributed to the fact that he has “provided a proven record of leadership – particularly with respect to military affairs – and people are very secure right now about our direction in Iraq.”

“Jim Webb has provided a real alternative – someone who can speak about Iraq and our military and our foreign policy with unmatched credibility. No one is his equal with respect to his ability to talk about success against terrorism in Iraq,” Moran said.

Some observers would like to have seen more from Webb on issues other than the war. Moran acknowledged this in an interview with the AFP.

“You have to fire an incumbent – so that makes it difficult,” Moran said. “You have to highlight your opponent’s inadequacies. And this one has been particularly difficult. But hey, ultimately I think people are going to vote on their economic security as well as their physical security. And they feel more secure with Jim Webb’s candidacy.”

“I think the reason for (the attention on Iraq) is that Iraq has overwhelmed all the other issues,” Moran said. “That’s all people have really been talking about – and the media has been covering, rightly so. But he’s talked about other issues as well. He’s talked about the disparity in the economy – and how you have tax cuts for the ultrarich, and the middle class and the lower-income class are being squeezed. So he’s talked about that – he’s talked about economics as well as Iraq.

“But rightly so, the media and others are paying attention to Iraq and our security,” Moran said.

Those are the issues that will get Webb elected on Tuesday, to hear Warner tell it.

“I think Virginians want a change,” Warner said. “They want a Congress that when the president is right, the senators will stand with the president – but when the president’s wrong, they’ll be an independent voice. Our current incumbent senator votes 96 percent of the time with the Bush administration. That’s a Congress that’s not doing its constitutional duty of providing a check and balance.

“I think if we want a way out of Iraq that is going to actually allow us to win the war on terror, if we’re going to make sure that we have a more competitive national economy, if we have actually have rational energy policies, we need a United States Senate and United States Congress that’s going to vote for change – and I think Jim Webb’s got the right experience and will bring the right kind of independent approach,” Warner said.

 

(Published 11-05-06)

A one-on-one interview with Mike Stark

 

By now you’ve certainly seen the video of a liberal blogger being tackled to the ground by a supporter of Republican Sen. George Allen at a campaign stop in Charlottesville from earlier this week.

And most likely, you have also heard that the Allen campaign has tried to characterize the blogger, Mike Stark, a 38-year-old University of Virginia law student, as having instigated the incident – and intimate that Stark appears to have coordinated his actions at the event with the campaign of Democratic Party rival Jim Webb.

And you’ve seen news accounts from the Associated Press and other mainstream-media outlets relate these details and others in a striking almost-mirror image to a news release put out by the Allen camp.

What you probably haven’t seen is Stark given much of an opportunity to tell his side of what happened at the Omni Hotel on Tuesday.

Until now.

“The whole story isn’t reflected on that videotape or in the news accounts. That’s the first thing that people need to understand,” Stark told The Augusta Free Press today.

Stark was at the Omni for the event featuring Allen and North Carolina Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole to use the opportunity to ask Allen afterward about a controversy over arrest records from his time at UVa. as a student in the 1970s that has swirled in the liberal blogosphere with rumors that the arrests had something to do with the breakup of his first marriage.

He almost didn’t get the chance to ask his questions.

“When the senator got there, he did some mingling. And he came down and sat down at the table right in front of me. I was all the way over on the side of the room, and he was within arm’s reach of me where he ended up sitting down. So I was really afraid that he was going to recognize me from the Staunton event,” said Stark, who confronted Allen at an August event in Staunton over allegations that the senator had frequently used the word “nigger” in the past.

He apparently didn’t recognize Stark – who made his way across the meeting room after the speech toward a hallway where the senator was to hold a post-speech press gaggle.

“I was probably 10 feet from the door, the senator was probably about 13 feet away from the door, 14 feet away from the door, when I said to him, Senator, the Democrats have tried to make this election about accountability. You can shut them up by telling us why you were arrested in Charlottesville back in the 1970s,” Stark said.

“He put his head down, and muttered something and shook his head – and immediately, I was being pushed and shoved and told I was out of line, and I couldn’t be there, and I couldn’t ask the senator these questions,” Stark said.

“A little scrum started,” Stark said, and he struggled to keep his balance.

“I was being pulled in all different directions. They were pulling me as we all made our way out the door,” Stark said.

Stark then got tangled up with Allen staffer Dan Allen.

“It was to the point where he’s crushing me against the doorjamb with his girth,” Stark said. “I’ve got my hand on his chest. He’s crushing me against the doorjamb, I put my hand on his chest, and took restrained measures to defend myself. I pushed him off of me.

“They’re making a big deal out of that – that I became violent when I pushed Dan Allen, and I instigated all of these contacts. All of that is absolutely untrue,” Stark said. “The contact was instigated after I initially asked the question about the arrest records – then there was probably about 30 seconds of jockeying for position as we tried to get through this door. And the push that we’re talking about was purely self-defense.”

Dan Allen, who is no relation to the senator, denied that he had done anything untoward in the incident in an interview with The Hook, a Charlottesville-based weekly.

“I think that the young man was pretty menacing and aggressive screaming out inappropriate questions,” Allen told the paper. “I was quite surprised when the young man slammed me against the door when we were getting Senator Allen out of the ballroom, so I was really concerned.”

Stark, for his part, was still trying to get Sen. Allen’s attention.

“I say, Is it true, senator, that you spit on or otherwise assaulted your wife from your first marriage? But he continued to ignore the questions. And people continued to push me,” Stark said.

“There’s a gap in the video – there’s a spatial gap in the video from the time everything happened in the room. Because I ended up walking up to Dan Allen and saying, Listen, I’m his constituent, he’s my senator, I’m allowed to ask him questions. This time, again, everybody’s trying to block me out and all the rest – and that’s when you see this guy Darden (John Darden, the former head of the Albemarle County GOP) spin around and tell me, You have to leave. Get out the door right now.

“I tried to ask him if he was with the hotel – because I wanted to see if he had any authority to ask me to leave, just like in Staunton. And I wasn’t able to complete the question. He said, No, I’m not, no, I’m not at all. That’s when all the violence escalated – and they decided to put their hands on me again and tackled me.”

Stark estimates that the incident took place over the period of a minute to a minute and 15 seconds.

“It’s appalling that Sen. Allen had that much time to stop this from happening – and did nothing,” Stark said. “At any time, while we were still in the ballroom, Sen. Allen could have said, Hey, wait a minute, this isn’t the way my campaign operates, don’t do that, take your hands off him. He asked a question, I’m not going to answer his question – I think it was impertinent and impolite. But this isn’t the type of country – instead, he says, These things happen in campaigns.

“He had an opportunity to lead. He had an opportunity to step up and say something about this,” Stark said. “Instead, he let it all go on – and he actually walked away from it while it was going on, not knowing if they were going to throw me through that plate-glass window or kick my head in or what they were going to do. He was, I believe, so concerned about not being in the camera’s picture at the same time that he decided to walk away instead of stepping up and saying, Hey, don’t do that.”

That the Allen camp has taken to using the press to buttress its claims that Stark initiated the incident by asking “inappropriate questions” and that he is some kind of Democratic Party or Webb campaign plant isn’t a point of concern for Stark – who recalls only one contact that he has ever had with the Webb campaign.

“He was asked if he had any evidence of me coordinating with the Webb campaign, he said, Yeah, at the last event, he walked up to a guy that was taking pictures and told him to take out his video camera,” Stark said, referring to the Staunton incident from this summer.

“I’ve explained this – I went there on my own, and I didn’t have any idea that a Webb cameraman was going to be there. When I found out that a Webb cameraman was there, yeah, I said, Record this – because who knows, there might be another Macaca incident,” Stark said.

“Immediately after that event out in Staunton, I went to the downtown meet-and-greet that was supposed to happen next – because I wanted to follow up with the question. I mean, they had me removed from the hotel, so I didn’t get to follow up on the question. So I went downtown to where he was supposed to be – and while I was down there, I was excited, I knew that I had just done something useful,” Stark said. “And I called the Webb campaign headquarters – and I said, Hey, you’ve got to give me the cell-phone number of the guy with the video camera, because he’s got to meet up with me. I’m going to follow up with these questions at this downtown meet-and-greet, and you guys are going to want that videotape.

“The girl on the other end of the phone seemed hesitant – and I was pissed off. She was like, Oh, I don’t know, the candidate doesn’t like that type of politics. I don’t know if we’re going to be able to help you,” Stark said.

“Not only is there no coordination, there is actively a separation – they are trying to separate themselves from my efforts,” Stark said.

Stark feels that those efforts – aimed at getting Allen on the record on issues involving race and his arrest record – have been successful.

“The way I’ve put this to people is after the Macaca incident, and after seeing all of this history of him posing for white supremacists and the Confederate flag, it got into my head that geez, he’s got this context here of questionable race past, and now using a racial slur – I wonder what other racial slurs he’s used, and one that is particularly relevant in American history. I wonder why nobody in the press is asking him about this? So I took it upon myself to do it – hoping that it would launch into the press and make the press think, you know, well, we probably are dropping the ball on this,” Stark said.

“That’s why I combined the question – the Confederate flag and the noose – with the ‘have you ever used the n-word?’ I do feel like I got a little bit of success from that – because not six weeks later, there was the article in the Salon magazine saying yeah, he did use the n-word. I think that did kick the press in the ass a little bit – because they started asking questions and investigating it. And now I think it’s something like a dozen people who have come forward and said, Yeah, he used that word all the time. And I’m not sure that they would have done that investigation if he hadn’t on tape denied ever using the n-word,” Stark said.

“I think the media can be shown the error of their ways,” Stark said. “I mean, in this case, there is more than a rumor here. There are actual divorce records that are sealed. And there are arrest records that you can see down here at the court house in Charlottesville. And the media is not asking him about these things. So I felt like, yeah, the media should be asking about these things – and I didn’t understand why they weren’t.

“And hopefully, if I can pound the phones and TV cameras long enough, people will start to understand that these questions, especially the arrest records – you’re asking to be United States senator, for Christ’s sake, your arrest record is relevant. For whatever reason, the media, up to now, hasn’t decided that his arrest record is relevant. They are allowing him – day after day after day – to not have to answer any questions about that,” Stark said.

In line with the adage about politics making for strange bedfellows, Stark is now a member of the media – he was hired this week by the left-leaning Air America Radio to serve as a field reporter for its program “The Young Turks.”

“I don’t know how long this is going to last – because to be honest with you, when you ask the questions that I ask, and when you ask the questions that they hired me to ask, they’re going to piss people off. And that’s going to cut off access for me,” Stark said.

“I understand how the game is played – I understand that the media, to a large extent, needs access to the powerful, and if you get too aggressive with the powerful, they cut off your access. But the thing I think the media may have dropped the ball on is that the powerful need access to the media as well. So you, too, have a little bit of power,” Stark said.

“I think the powerful will find it fairly easy to marginalize and ignore me – but I think as we get more and more people asking the difficult questions that politicians should be asked, it will be more and more difficult for politicians to ignore the people,” Stark said.

(Published 11-03-06)