Here we go again. Virginia Republicans, shut out in victories in statewide races for several elections, is turning to a wannabe Trumpite who lies about critical race theory, opposes policies that aids transgender high school student and claims, without any facts, that the Old Dominion’s public education system plans to eliminate accelerated math classes and ban both the Pledge of Allegiance and Independence Day from school curriculums.
Typical stunts from the rabid right-wing that dominaed the GOP in many states, including the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Glenn Youngkin, the GOP nominee, ran a conservative equity fund that cheated seniors and moved jobs overseas, and now want to add the citizens of Virginia to his growling list of victims.
Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe will most likely keep the the Democrats in the governor’s mansion.
“McAuliffe doesn’t need to hit the long ball to win,” Stephen Farnsworth, Mary Wahington University polical science professor and director of the school’s Center for Leaership and Media Studies, told The Washington Post earlier this month.
He adds:
A series of issues that get him on base — improve teacher salaries, improve broadband access, additional resources . . . [for] schools recovering from covid education troubles — these are effective. Republicans, given the bluish tint of the Virginia electorate, have to swing for the long ball.
The ‘bluish tint” Farnsworth is part of Virginia’s continued slide towards Democratic candidate on the state level. The Commonwealth voted against Trump in 2016 and 2020 and has sent GOP’s right-wing political wannabes back into obscurity in elections.
While Southwestern Virginia — including Floyd County — continues to vote for GOP losers, the dominating voting blocks in Northern Virginia and Tidewater are far more progresive than the right-wing that litters our area.
But cracks continue to appear in our area. The once all-GOP board of supervisors now has two “independents,” both representatives of Little River and Courthouse districts, which have given their districts approval of liquor by the drink, among other progressive ideas.
Still, Floyd County continues to vote Republican and the lackluster performance of Nick Rush as the General Assembly delegate for our county (and parts of Montgomery) is ending as he steps down. The GOP candidate is another Trumpie, right-wing rabble-rouser Marie March, who declares herself a Trumpie with cowboy boots. She and her doctor husband own Due South and Fatback Soul Shack in Christiansburg, but live in Floyd County.
Their claim to fame is attending the Jan. 6, “Save America” Rally in Washington, a Trump spawned riot that stormed the Capitol, that left people dead and threatened American Democracy.
She, of course, proclaims she is proud to be part of the sordid event, which she says it was “my right to support the President” who now faces criminal indictments.
Critical race theory, which she and other Trumpites hate, is now a favorite conspiracy theory of right-wing propaganda Fox “News,” which also joins in with the homophobic bigots who equate transgender and other LGBTQ issues with evangelical lies about non-existent anti-gay teachings of religion.
In reality, the theory bases the virulent racism that still infects America as a systemic problem. I saw it first hand as an elementary school student in Farmville, VA, in the 1950s and 60s when the racist Board of Supervisors and School Board of Prince Edward County shut down the public schools to prevent federal mandates to integrate. They opened an all-white private school, denying public education to any and all minorities in the county for too many years.
I also find it ironic that the owner of a Soul Food restaurant in Christiansburg supports a racist former president like Donald Trump. Hypocrisy is alive and well in politics.
Writes Laura Vozzella and Hannah Natasnon of The Washington Post:
Farnsworth says it makes sense that McAuliffe would offer practical, nuts-and-bolts plans for schools as just one part of an expansive set of policy goals, while Youngkin would zero in on a more limited set of highly animating issues.
As a former governor, McAuliffe has a background on education that he can point to, such as a record $1 billion investment in K-12 schools, as well as plans for a second term. His schools policy — laid out in a six-page document studded with footnotes to meaty educational research — ranges from lofty promises to address “modern-day segregation in schools” to in-the-weeds plans to train and retain more teachers.
All of that appeals to Pam Davis-Vaught, principal of Highland View Elementary School in Bristol, on the border with Tennessee. Hers is a poor school, where teachers have chipped in to buy washing machines for use on campus to ensure children have clean clothes. It benefited from nutrition programs expanded under then-first lady Dorothy McAuliffe, but problems remain at a run-down schoolhouse dating to the 1930s.
“When we shut down for covid on March the 13th, the rats and things from the neighborhood kind of moved in, and it took us quite a bit to exterminate them,” said Davis-Vaught, a coal miner’s daughter who also has worked closely with the region’s Republican legislators. “That makes learning very difficult, when your teacher is constantly on the lookout for something.”
She said McAuliffe has the right idea, not only with his promised infrastructure investments, but also with his plans to provide broadband and create virtual internships for students in areas such as hers, where job prospects are limited.
“He’s going to be our champion,” she said. “He’s going to do as much as he possibly can for school infrastructure, small and rural schools, economically disadvantaged children.”
–The Washington Post
Youngkin, of course, appeals to the fringes, the rabid whites who see any moderation with Blacks as a threat to their claimed, but nonexistent, “white majority.” They continue to ignore the reality of a diverse America, defined by a diverse people who seek inclusion, not exclusion.
In a diverse nation, no one group should consider itself superior to another. Doing so is an act of treason in a Democracy and should be like the confederate statues that are being removed and scrapped across the Old Dominion. It’s time to stop worshiping those who are trying to destroy our way of life.