BlueRidgeForum

Last week we wrote about attempts to unseat conservative Republican Party state chairmen in Maryland and Virginia: “The Republic Groans While Some Maryland Midgets Natter” here and “The Virginia Republican Party Galloping Off a Cliff?” here.

In a story datelined this Thursday, veteran reporter John Gizzi explained in his Human Events column here - -

“It frequently seems to happen to chairmen of state Republican parties, particularly when they are conservative: Charges are flung that the chairman is abrasive and doesn’t get along with key leaders in the party. Weak fund-raising results and defeats at the polls are inevitably blamed on the man or woman at the party helm. Soon some well-known party figures (who are inevitably well-heeled or are elected officials) begin calling for the head of the GOP chairman. 

This is what happened to former California State Republican Chairmen John McGraw and Shawn Steel a few years ago and, more recently, to Arizona GOP Chairman Randy Pullen, who narrowly survived an attempt to purge him at the state party convention in January. And now it is happening to Jeff Frederick, a 33-year-old state legislator who is Republican state chairman of Virginia.”

But it’s not just in Virginia, or California, or Arizona.  One veteran Maryland politico and a former Republican county chairmen told us that when he and his wife read long-time conservative political analyst Gizzi’s opening lines, they immediately assumed he was talking about Maryland.

Gizzi makes some interesting points about the Virginia situation:

• “[P]rivately, organizers of the ‘Dump Frederick’ effort concede they do not have the two-thirds committee vote necessary to oust him. 
• “When I pressed one of the Frederick’s foes about who he and his allies had in mind as a potential chairman if the incumbent goes, he said: ‘No one yet. We haven’t thought it through that far. Right now, getting Frederick out is the main idea.’”(Underscoring Forum’s.)

Gizzi also drops some new names into the mixing bowl:

“If [Frederick] is forced out or resigns, several names have been mentioned as potential replacements for Frederick, among them former Loudon County Party Chairman Randy Minchew, former state party official Shaun Kenney, and Northern Virginia businessman Earle Williams, who lost a bid for the Republican nomination for governor in 1993.”

While Virginia Republican U. S. Representatives have inserted themselves here into this state party kerfluffle, their judgment on national issues is open to grave question by their joining what Michell Malkin calls “the 85 CYA-on-AIG House Republicans.” They supported what the House Republican Study Committee calls the  “retroactive tax punishment bill.” Malkin declares - -

“I still have seen very little questioning of the 85 Grabby Hands House Republicans, led by minority whip Eric Cantor, who went along with this abomination. How can they be trusted not to lose their heads when the next Kabuki outrage comes along? How can they be counted on to resist the next confiscatory scheme down the road — say, this one?“

We also addressed their serious economic and constitutional misstep here.

A Republican Civil War?

Thomas Sowell in his “Republican Civil War- Imitating Democrats has failed miserably to get votes” here on National Review on Line illustrates the persistent political blindness of many of those attacking Republican conservatives:

“There has even been an undercurrent among some Republicans of a sense that it is time to move away from  the image of Ronald Reagan,to update the party and court newer and less embarrassing segments of the voters than their current base.

There is certainly a lot to be said for inviting wider segments of the population to join you, by explaining how your principles benefit the country in general, and those segments in particular. But that is fundamentally different from abandoning your principles in hopes of attracting new votes with opportunism.

No segment of the population has lost more by the agendas of the liberal constituencies of the Democratic party than the black population.

The teachers’ unions, environmental fanatics, and the ACLU are just some of the groups to whose interests blacks have been sacrificed wholesale. Lousy education and high crime rates in the ghettos, and unaffordable housing elsewhere with building restrictions, are devastating prices to pay for liberalism.

Yet the Republicans have never articulated that argument, and their opportunism in trying to get black votes by becoming imitation Democrats has failed miserably for decades on end.” (Underscoring Forum’s.)

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