Goode riddance
Virginia’s Board of Elections announces results today of the official canvas of election returns in the 5th Congressional District and is expected to certify the long-overdue demise of Congressman Virgil Goode’s embarassing political career.
The final result will show political novice Tom Perriello beat Goode (right) by a little over 700 votes. Even if Goode requests a recount, the margin should be enough to bring the curtain down on Goode’s 35-year-career.
The results show a growing electorate fed up with Goode’s racist and bigoted antics which too often brought shame on the Old Dominion.
Goode has been criticized by pundits and other politicians on a national level over the past few years for his hard-line anti-immigration stances — a situation highlighted by his 2006 political brush-up with U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn. Ellison, a Muslim, decided to take his congressional oath using a Quran. Goode wrote at the time that more Muslims will be elected if the country doesn’t adopt anti-immigration stances — a position he carried into this year’s campaign.
But Goode was more than just a rabid right-winger on immigration. His politics crossed the line into outright racism. Over several campaigns, he paid racist GOP operative Bobby May nearly $100,000 for work. May, who also served as treasurer of the Buchanan County Republican Party, wrote a racist screed that cost him his job on the Presidential campaign of John McCain. Reports the Los Angeles Times:
A local newspaper columnist, in a spoof of Obama’s platform, wrote in one recent piece that the Democrat would hire the rapper Ludacris to paint the White House black (a reference to a pro-Obama song by Ludacris), and divert more foreign aid to Africa so "the Obama family there can skim enough to allow them to free their goats and live the American Dream." He joked that Obama would replace the 50 stars on the U.S. flag "with a star and crescent logo," an Islamic symbol, and that his policy on drugs would be to "raise taxes to pay for Obama’s inner-city political base."
The columnist, Bobby May, is also treasurer of the Buchanan County Republican Party and was listed in a July news release as the county’s representative on McCain’s Virginia leadership team, though he said his column reflected his views alone, and he denied it was racist.
Goode’s defeat is a positive sign that at least some of the overt racism that has long ruled rural Virginia is fading. Virginians sent another racist member of Congress — Sen. George Allen — packing in 2006. Terminating the career of Virgil Goode is welcome evidence that change may come slowly to the Commonwealth but it is coming.
UPDATE: Goode, of course, is not giving up. He announced Monday he will seek a recount.
And Amen.
If things were so bad under Virgil Goode then how come he “hung around” for 35 years? I am not in his district and don’t have a vote but I was just wondering, he had to do something right.
As for George Allen, I have met him on several occassions and found him to be one of the most down to earth politicians ever. You applaud yourself for sending “another racist member of Congress packing in 2006.”
I am not sure where you get your facts but I sure would like to hear some of them. You make more blanket accusations than anyone I know. I would like to hear facts!! Not hearsay, not your opinion, the truth!!
Reports Wikipedia:
As a Republican political operative working for the national party in 1984, I heard Allen use racist terms during a GOP planning session in Richmond. I heard him use them again at a political fundraiser in Washington in `1991. At that time, I ran the Political Action Committee for the National Association of Realtors. I wrote about this on my political web site in 2006:
Consider this signed statement from the former secretary and treasurer of the Charlottesville Republican Committee:
Salon reported this on September 27, 2006:
Had I not personally heard Allen use racial epithets at political functions in 1984 and 1991 I might have been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt but his history of racism continued well beyond his college days. He’s a racist, pure and simple.
You found Allen to be "down to earth?" He’s a politician and can turn on the charm when necessary. In 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlin returned to England after a meeting with Adolph Hitler in Munich. Chamberlin told the British Press that he looked Hitler in the eye and found him to be "a reasonable man."
As for Goode, he began his political career as a Democrat but later switched to the GOP. At one time, he rabid right-wing positions fit the attitudes of many residents of the Southside. Virginia has changed. Goode hasn’t. That’s why he lost.
Here is a little fact for you:
Blogs are vehicles for personal expression. Information included in blogs is most often presented from a particular point of view. Blogs are opinions.
If you want truth, try more trusted sources such as Air America, Democracy Now, Democratic Underground, and the like.
What on earth would give you the idea that I ever tease?
I rank the organizations I recommended right up there with the other un-impeachable sources I researched to account for global warming at Rocky Knob.
And besides, “objective” is subjective.
The sources you listed are all left-wing propaganda outlets (as opposed to right-wing propaganda sources like Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Free Republic, et. al).
Objective news sources, unfortunately, are few and far between.
Thanks for the cut and paste lesson from wikipedia. I believe that wikipedia is information that anyone can add and that does not have to be “proven.”
I will not argue with anything that you heard straight from the horses mouth (make joke now).
As for Goode, I am glad you cleared that up. Anyone that begins his career as a democrat and then changes to the GOP should have been voted out a long time ago. I mean I am not going to stand for any man that has a change of heart. Maybe the next time a politician changes parties we should hang them in fromt of the capital building.
I asked a simple question about why a man was in office for 35 years if he was so terrible and all I get is sarcasm from the peanut gallery and a one sentence answer from you saying he changed.
Like I said before I do not live in his district and did not follow him closely. Forgive me for trying to gain a little knowledge however left wing skewed it would be.
Hey, it’s just the “peanut gallery” weighing back in.
I thought a little sarcasm was called for since you pontificated that you didn’t want opinion from a blog. Apparently you feel you deserved so very much more. My bad.
So in fairness, this time, I will refer you to a couple of other more centrist websites that should be of great value to you:
lightenup.org and senseofhumortransplants.com
The vast majority of info came from other news sources, including Salon and The Washington Post.
I tried to answer your question in a straightforward manner but your response makes me wonder if you are interested in an open discussion or if you just want to argue for the argument’s sake. You obviously come from a partisan point of view (your comment about not caring for anyone who was once a Democrat suggests that) so I’m left with the conclusion that you approach the issue from the right side of the political fence.
However, as you and I have discussed here before, I tend to discount opinions from those who hide behind screen names and free email addresses. Jack is welcome to his opinion and he has the courage to express with by backing it up with his real and full name.
If you want to debate Eric, do it honestly and openly. Don’t dismiss my response with the false claim that it was based only on a "cut and paste" from Wikipedia when I, in fact, quoted multiple sources. Such tactics suggest you have no interest in facts and that your only purpose here is to disrupt discussion on this blog. If that is true, do it elsewhere. It is not welcome here.
Based on Eric’s behavior in previous threads, I doubt very much if he is really interested in facts. He is a Republican who is upset that his party got stomped in the election earlier this month.
Eric, Doug answered your questions with multiple citations from multiple sources. That you chose to ignore that is your failing, not his. Your party lost. It deserved to lose. Get over it.
With the head kook retired from Southside politics, maybe now the region can attract the kind of businesses that will bring good jobs and new prosperity. Virginia suffered under Virgil Goode and hopefully we have seen the last of him, or any of the suckers that may want to sprout from his roots. Onward, and upward Southside!
Thanks Doug! I was wondering when you were going to turn on the “troll filter”. I think honest people can enjoy a good, spirited discussion without the input of “snipers”. Some folks will say just about anything as long as they don’t have to put their name on it. We can do without that for sure.
By the way, that guy over at “Classical Values” really seems to have a special place in his heart for you. Did you pee in his corn flakes one morning or what?
I removed some comments from this discussion thread because of three problems:
1–The comments had nothing to do with the topic of the thread but was an attempt to rehash an old issue that was fully discussed on this web site in May;
2–The anonymous commenter who started the topic posted a second comment using a second screen name and a different "free email" address. That address turned out to be a phony and a backtrace to his IP address gave him away ;
3–There have been numerous attempts to flood the site with comments from fake email addresses and the like.
We’ve had many discussions in the past about fake email addresses and the use of "screen names" and anonymous "handles." More and more, people who want to disrupt our discussions do so through cowardice and an unwillingness to put their names to what they write. Because of this, I’m putting the comments into a "moderation" mode for the time being and am working on a new commenting system that will require posters to use their real names and a valid email address.
I’m sorry it has come to this but I have no wish to see Blue Ridge Muse’s discussions become a free-for-all dominated by cowards who hide behind anonymity. If you want to question my honesty, don’t do it anonymously. It you want to question my integrity, had the courage to do so with your own name. If you want to question my courage, dont’ act like a coward.
He was one of a dozen or so right-wing bloggers who had a field day with the screwup at Capitol Hill Blue where we recanted a source.
I screwed up, admited it, apologized to my readers at Capitol Hill Blue, and moved on. I dealt with the situation here in May and explained it to the readers of Muse. Those who brought it up here did so in an attempt to swing the discussion away from the real issues here — the racism of Virgil Goode, George Allen, the extreme elements of the GOP and the slow, but welcome, changing attitudes of Virginia.