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After watching the run-up to the political pageant in Richmond Saturday and after reading Mr. McDonnell’s address and press accounts of his recent positions, one has to congratulate the Republican Party of Virginia for a very well-managed media event.

Not quite American Idol – but for a modern Republican political convention, the gathering had the obligatory emphasis on personality and well-coiffed players as well as underscoring gubernatorial candidate McDonnell’s marketing pitches — jobs and energy.

We were not able to attend.  Bloggers on the spot seemed to give a good account, and we are grateful for their work.

Are conservatives better off if Mr. McDonnell wins in November?

Marginally yes, in our view, because he will likely keep the Virginia government from backsliding on the culture of life and on Second Amendment protection.  This is ironic, because although McDonnell might do a little good on these issues of ‘ideology,’ his election war cries are jobs and energy.

Illegal Immigration and “Ideology”

The Washington Post’s Anita Kumar added immigration to these issues of ideology. “McDonnell and Bolling, intent on adapting to a changing state, have sought to play down their focus on ideology and such hot-button issues as gun rights, immigration and abortion.” She artfully failed to acknowledge the major fiscal implications or social consequences of illegal immigration.

We reserve judgment on what actions Mr. McDonnell and his two running mates might choose to take to combat illegal immigration. There are, however, a variety of anti-illegal immigration steps that states can take.  Yet when Bob McDonnell announced his new anti-gang proposal, together with Representative Frank Wolf who has done important work in seeing that anti-gang initiatives got the money they needed over the years, candidate McDonnell was addressing a problem directly related to illegal immigration. The word “immigration,” however, does not appear in his post announcing the initiative.  One gets the picture.

The Scent of a Statist

Unfortunately on the economy, the sometime Attorney General and state lawmaker has the scent of a statist.

In the unlikely event this Federal administration allows drilling for energy off Virginia’s shores, candidate McDonnell already has plans for any revenues coming to the Commonwealth - - and these do not appear to run to reducing the size of state government.  He suggests that Virginia pick winners and losers with space ports, film industries, and “green jobs.” (Free-market economists call this approach “industrial policy” or state central planning.)

Insofar as his rhetoric is serious, McDonnell will apparently have the Commonwealth decide what professions or vocations get state preference in funding higher education. The drafters of Mr. McDonnell’s education platform might want to read Richard Vedder’s “Going Broke by Degree — Why College Costs Too Much” before developing grandiose plans for 100,000 more higher-education graduates.

We heartily agree with Mr. McDonnell, however, that the Federal government should get out of the way and stop saying no to energy development ranging from nuclear facilities to offshore drilling.

What’s Missing

But: we don’t find McDonnell signing the gubernatorial no-new-taxes pledge, nor jawboning the TABOR approach of limiting local and state spending growth to inflation and population growth, nor any hint of coming to grips with Virginia Medicaid.  There is no reference to expensive local regulatory barriers to new businesses, no reference to school-board transparency which might really jolt the teachers’unions. High-speed rail is wonderful for building contractors but makes the same kind of fiscal nonsense as the great Dulles Rail raid on the U.S. Treasury.

Transparency in government is all very well. We would also like some transparency on any network of political consultants and related donors backing up both Party’s nominees for governor of Virginia. This is the era of Tea Parties, not political machines.

Romancing the Affluent Suburbs

Will Mr. McDonnell appeal to the northern Virginia suburbs?  Probably. Not because of any particular policies but because, not surprisingly, he looks as if he is part of  that community. Again, candidate McDonnell might appeal to the newly arrived suburbanite as someone who might “empathize” with whatever their concerns may be — as president Barack Obama did for affluent suburbanites during his campaign.  McDonnell could well be someone they would want to have for dinner or to talk up to their friends.  A not unimportant matter of style in Fairfax and Loudoun Counties.

The apparently reunited Virginia Republican Party probably reflects the polity of the Old Dominion: culturally conservative, and fiscally chafing under growing state and local government–yet oddly reconciled to it. As McDonnell states: “During the last decade, state spending has grown by roughly 70%, while Virginians incomes have increased by only 5%”.

The Virginia Republican Establishment (with Mr. McDonnell’s objection to Federal card-check legislation as a notable exception) too often shares the indifference of the Maryland Republican Establishment by failing to speak out in support of conservatives battling nationally today against crushing cap-and-trade taxes and government medicine, for free political speech and against hate-crimes laws and political correctness, against amnesty in all its permutations, against growing government ownership of industry, against government locking up vast tracts of public lands.

But for those Republicans who are conscientious conservatives, here is an opportunity for Virginia (and Maryland) conservative grass-roots leaders and elected officials at all levels to weigh in against cap-and-trade taxes.

Even those Virginia Republicans whose official role is to speak out have trouble getting it consistently right.  As an illustration, the Washington Post’s Anita Kumar called “U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor . . . an all around popular guy at the convention.” Yet the all-around popular House Republican Whip voted for No Child Left Behind, the Medicare Prescription Drug Entitlement, against free political speech in a 2006 Republican vote which George Will called “traducing the Constitution and disgracing conservatism.” Cantor voted twice for the TARP bill last fall, and this year for a punitive 90-percent tax. (Presumably this is one of the reasons he is the trail boss of a listening tour.)

Lamentably, for too many Virginia Republicans, looking at the voting records of popular incumbents of their party is an annoyance at best and ‘unsporting’ during election season.  Accountability is the enemy of tribal voting.

We should not lose hope, however.  As Mark Levin points out - -

“For the Conservative, the challenge is daunting and the road will be long and hard,” Levin sums up. “But it took the Statist nearly eighty years to get here, and it will take the Conservative at least as long to change the nation’s direction. Still, there is no time to waste. The Conservative must act now.”

The question for those of us who are Virginia conservatives is how do we now implement Mark Levin’s survival plan.

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