“We have a sort of fixation about Virginians in this country, Mr. Endicott,” says a character in one of Raymond Chandler’s novels. “We think of them as the flower of Southern chivalry and honor.” The state’s two major political parties are doing their best to bury that notion underneath steaming piles of mud.
Recently the Virginia GOP distributed a mailer attacking a Henrico Democrat for being too cozy with Richmond’s mayor, Levar Stoney, using language that sounded very much like a dog whistle to racial animus. It was not, to put it kindly, the party’s finest hour.
Virginia Democrats seem intent on proving that two can play at that game. They have distributed a mailer of their own, seeking to tie Republican gubernatorial nominee Ed Gillespie to the white nationalists who rampaged through Charlottesville in August.
That isn’t merely a reach. It’s practically libel.
Gillespie has repeatedly and passionately condemned white supremacists and other creatures that have crawled out from under the alt-right rock. Linking him to them requires the following absurd logic: (1) Donald Trump said some stupid things about Charlottesville. (2) Trump is a Republican. (3) Gillespie is a Republican. (4) Therefore, Gillespie supports racial hate.
That makes no more sense than this: (1) Some Democrats have defended the violent street thugs of antifa. (2) Ralph Northam is a Democrat. (3) Therefore, Ralph Northam supports violent street thuggery.
In point of fact, the Gillespie campaign has made a similar argument by trying to link Northam and the violent MS-13 gang. Parliamentary contrivance forced Northam to cast a tie-breaking vote on a bill to ban sanctuary cities in Virginia. He voted against it. Through the magic of political transubstantiation, the Gillespie campaign turned this into support for both illegal immigration and violent street gangs that want to “Kill. Rape. Control.”
Then there’s the mailer supporting Democrat Kathy Tran, who is running for the House of Delegates. It shows her opponent, Lolita Macheno-Smoak, beside two Halloween masks. The three of them are “the scariest threats” this season. Get it? Republicans complain that a similar mailer from a GOP candidate would be labeled racist, and they have a point.
With almost two weeks to go before the last ballot is cast, we shudder to think of what is still to come. Forget Raymond Chandler. Virginia’s party pros seem to prefer H.L. Mencken — who said, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
