Published February 18, 2011 in The Lynchburg Ledger
On January 24th, former Governor and Senator George Allen announced that he was a candidate to regain the Senate seat he lost to Jim Webb in 2006. In a video announcement he said, “Today, I’m announcing my candidacy for the U.S. Senate. You know me as someone willing to fight for the people of Virginia, and I’d like the responsibility to fight for you again. Hire me on for six years, and I pledge to work hard restoring freedom, personal responsibility and opportunity for all.”
George Allen lost his seat in 2006 to Jim Webb, who is actually now the senior Senator from Virginia. In a close race, Webb won by a mere 9,329 votes thanks to a lopsided vote in Northern Virginia. While Allen took most of the state, he lost Northern Virginia by a whopping 103,430 votes after The Washington Post set out to destroy him as he was instrumental in defeating Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle two years earlier.
It was the Post which hammered Allen mercilessly over his “Macaca” statement. Since then, the circulation of the Post has dropped significantly and their influence and diminished accordingly. However, they still influence the Northern Virginia voters.
Just over two weeks after the Allen announcement, Jim Webb made an announcement of his own. He announced on February 9th he would not seek re-election. In his statement, Webb said, “After much thought and consideration, I have decided to return to the private sector, where I have spent most of my professional life, and will not seek re-election in 2012,”
After the 2009 election when Bob McDonnell easily beat Democrat Creigh Deeds and the 2010 election seeing three of Virginia’s Congressmen defeated, he obviously saw the handwriting on the wall.
The Washington Times reported, “Mr. Webb’s announcement was not entirely unexpected, given that the decorated Marine and former Navy secretary has never been fond of the glad-handing and fundraising involved in running a statewide campaign, and because he supported some of his party’s more controversial policies, which haunted them in the 2010 election.”
The Washington Post’s Lee Hockstader wrote “Jim Webb's announcement that he's quitting the Senate after his terms finished in 2012 confirms his refreshing reputation as a maverick unwed to the perks of office.”
Hockstader went on to say about George Allen, “ Then there's George Allen, whom Webb beat -- strike that -- who beat himself in his race for reelection to the Senate in 2006. Allen will never live down his Macaca notoriety; I'll lay bets that it will feature in the lead -- probably the headline -- of most of his obituaries. But he retains some good will among Republicans who prefer to remember him as a conservative governor who notched some achievements in office than as a do-nothing senator whose swagger, arrogance and, many believe, oblique racism contributed to his party's loss of control of the U.S. Senate.”
The Post is too modest, they need to take the full credit for Allen’s defeat.
Now comes the question of who the Democrat nominee will be. Former Governor Tim Kaine would be the logical choice but so far, no announcement. He was one of the first governors in 2008 to support Obama and that will now hang as a millstone around his neck now that the bloom is off the Obama presidency.
Also being mentioned is recently defeated Congressman Tom Perriello. In fact, there are a total of three recently unemployed Democrat congressmen from Virginia who might want to run.
We will let the Democrats hash that one out and there is still plenty of time for the volatile political climate to change.
George Allen will not be unopposed. Already announced is Richmond Tea Party candidate Jamie Radke. In her web site, she states, “I am the mother of three young children, and my first priority is both to protect them today and protect their future. I truly worry about what the next five years holds for our children and the nation, given this climate of reckless and immoral spending. Someone must step into the gap so that our children and America are not crushed in the coming years under the weight of insurmountable debt and debilitating taxes.
“As a US Senator uncorrupted by inside-the-Beltway politics, I will put our nation’s future first and serve the interests of our families and children, rather than perpetuating the perverse system created by big-government politicians.”
George Allen has his work cut out for him and I’m sure he is up to the task. He will have a lot of minds to change. He was not supported by the extreme conservative wing when he was in office. They took note that his chief of staff, Jay Timmons, was a homosexual. George Allen shipped him over to the National Republican Senatorial Committee where he worked in opposition to homosexual marriage. He was outed by the DC homosexual publication, The Washington Blade.
While it was troubling for me that a political savvy homosexual had the confidence of Allen (I had actually met Timmons at an Independence Day function), it was not a deal-breaker for me as it was for others.
As a result, we ended up with Webb who voted for the Obama agenda, right down to repealing “Don’t Ask – Don’t Tell,” something George Allen would never had done.
If there is one lesson I have learned in politics over these past 25 years, is that when you take an all or nothing position, you end up with nothing every time.
