Greg Sargent over at the Washington Post is a columnist I read and admire and he has found the proper label to identify GOP gubernatorial wannabes: “Trump Zombies.” He also considers the Zombie running for governor as a GOP candidate in Virginia as one to the primary “Trump Zombies.”
Writes Sargent in Tuesday’s Post:
If there is one thing that might get Democratic voters to take state-level races more seriously, it’s the Zombie Trumpism that continues to afflict GOP governors. In states where Covid-19 cases are surging, they steadfastly refuse to take the virus seriously enough, and some are actively thwarting local efforts to combat it, a state of derangement that refuses to die.
This is why we should pay close attention to the Virginia gubernatorial contest. It is providing an opportunity for Democrats to prosecute the case against this sort of derelict governing — which, if successful, could offer a model for Democrats to get more aggressive in taking it on elsewhere.
The Democratic candidate, Terry McAuliffe, is placing public health questions involving masks and vaccines squarely before the electorate in a way that’s all too rare among Democrats. He is excoriating Republican opponent Glenn Youngkin for opposing vaccine and mask mandates and casting this as a holdover of Donald Trump’s deranged approach to Covid-19.
Youngkin has blasted vaccine requirements at Virginia universities and among state employees, and has come out against vaccine mandates generally. Though he encourages vaccines by choice, he also explicitly urged people to seek an “exemption” for “whatever reason.”
By contrast, McAuliffe — who was governor from 2014 to 2018 — supports mask requirements in schools, and supports requiring vaccines for school teachers and staff and requiring vaccines or tests for state employees. So this race puts our grand national debate over masks and vaccines on the ballot this November.
I’m not a fan of McAuliffe. I dealt with him personally during my time in Washington as a political operative of the GOP and later as the vice president who oversaw what was then the largest political action committee (PAC) in America in the late 80s and early 90s (The Realtor’s Political Action Committee, known as RPAC).
But I also knew Youngkin as the head of The Carlyle Group, a hedge fund that cheated senior citizens and bought out companies that he closed, sending thousands of jobs overseas. Given the choice, I would naturally choose McAuliffe, who did a good job in his earlier handling of the Virginia government as a governor.
I also have no desire to see a Trump Zombie in the governor’s mansion in the Commonwealth.
Of course, we are awash in Trump Zombies in Floyd County, from the home on U.S. 221 north of Floyd plastered with obnoxious hate inspired by the defeated and decadent former president, pickup trucks displaying Confederate flags, Trump bumper stickers and racist screeds and the litany of Republican Trumpies who infect the comment period of school board, Supervisors and Town Council meetings.
The best way, I’m told, to get rid of a zombie is to remove and kill their brains. That would be a problem with a Trump Zombie. No one has proven they have any functioning gray matter between their ears since they choose to follow another brain-dead zombie like Donald John Trump.
Guess we will have to do it the old-fashioned way — at the ballot box in November — and vote for McAuliffe and send Youngkin back into the hellhole where zombies fester and rot.