The Tea Party Could Have Prevented This

Yesterday, all over Virginia, local and state elections took place. Many small places had hotly contested campaigns for sheriffs and supervisors (the Board of Supervisors is the governing body of a county in the Commonwealth of Virginia). Such things never make national news but they are deeply important to those who run for local office, and small-town newspapers will be full of analyses. The old adage that “all politics are local” always comes to mind when reading the results.

But there are times when local politics are harbingers of things to come. This was certainly the case in yesterday’s vote up in Virginia’s newly-cut 87th District. To begin with, this November’s election follows the census year, and those head-counting years re-draw the boundaries as populations fluctuate here and there. The new 87th is one such place.

But what makes it especially ‘interesting’ for politics in Virginia — and to those who watch these signs and signals for what they portend on a larger scale — is the possible election in the 87th District of a sharia candidate for the Commonwealth’s House of Delegates (Virginia has always declared itself a “commonwealth” or a “dominion”, but never a mere state — no matter the customs elsewhere).

The Blue Ridge Forum follows local doings in Virginia and Maryland. It posted some of the details on Mr. Ramadan, the fellow with the Muslim Brotherhood connections, and the results in the 87th:

Yesterday’s election results in Virginia’s 87th District showed — in spite of a GOP sweep of the House of Delegates statewide — that Republican candidate David Ramadan lost in conservative Loudoun County and only edged out his Democrat opponent in the entire 87th District by 50 votes out of 10,875. The 87th includes parts of both Prince William and Loudoun Counties.

Obviously a recount in the 87th District election is possible. [More likely it will be required by the state with such a close call — D]

Many conservatives view Mr. Ramadan as a fellow-traveler of Political Islamists if not one himself.

Grover Norquist was a key backer and, we believe, orchestrated the entrance of former Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese into the contested 87th district GOP primary in behalf of first-time candidate Ramadan.

[…]

Former Reagan defense aide Frank Gaffney, now head of the Center for Security Policy, was a featured voice at an illuminating Ramadan protest with other security experts in downtown Leesburg last August.

We had a post on that protest at the time, hoping that Ramadan would lose the primary. No such luck..

Blue Ridge wonders, too, at the political cost of backing this fellow:

The governor of Virginia himself spent some political capital in behalf of David Ramadan. In doing so, he obviously sent what many conservatives would regard as a questionable political signal.

I’ll say! The most “questionable political signal” one can imagine in an otherwise obscure race. The numbers of voters who care about such things are growing. Otherwise Mr. Ramadan would not have done so poorly running as a Republican in a conservative area. (Those lost votes speak volumes, Governor. Watch your back if you plan on higher office, as you so obviously do when you appear with Mitt Romney.)

The Forum continues:

One can be sure that both candidate Ramadan and his friends at the top of the Virginia GOP will ensure that they have industrial-strength talent looking over the shoulders of officials during any recount.

Yes, indeed. Just one more creepy aspect of this whole artificial insertion of the Muslim Brotherhood into Virginia politics.

Jerry Gordon at the New English Review picked up the Blue Ridge column, noting both the close vote and the number of big-wig, go-along-to-get-along- inside-the-Beltway Republicans who came out in favor of a questionable candidate for a state assembly seat, for heaven’s sake. Had Ramadan been a real conservative Republican candidate instead of a handpicked Grover Norquist cutout he’d have won easily. That he did not do so is a sign of hope that people understand the back story on Mr. Ramadan:

That is a margin of less than 0.5 percent, certainly sufficient to have the Democrat opponent of Ramadan request a re-count. This Virginia state legislature race got national attention, because Ramadan had the backing of Virginia’s GOP Governor Bob McDonnell, US House Majority Leader, Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor, former US Attorney General Edwin Meese and Grover Norquist, the King of K Street GOP Lobbyists in Washington, DC and facilitator of MB infiltration into the GOP and conservative circles.

Why would those big-time, heavy hitters be weighing in a state delegate race??

What favors are being paid to whom? Edwin Meese in District 87? Give.me.a.break.

You will note that the Center for Security Policy is one of the few places courageous enough to bell Grover Norquist’s Islamic cat. In a severely ‘insider’ place like Washington, D.C., Gaffney exhibits rare valor indeed. No doubt it costs him something to do so.

Virginia’s governor, Bob McDonnell, has his eye on the national scene. It’s obvious now that he’s aiming for some kind of vice-presidential pick this time around or making plans for a chase after the Big Prize in 2016. These guys just never stop.

McDonnell was elected on a promise to privatize the liquor industry in Virginia, to get it out of state control and into private hands where it could be run efficiently, become more consumer-friendly, and rake in tax revenues for the state. It’s fortunate we didn’t hold our breath waiting for that one to become a reality.

For American voters, a warning: keep your eye on Virginia’s governor in the next few years. He likes the Muslim Brotherhood and he doesn’t keep his campaign promises. We already have one of those in the Oval Office. We don’t need a Republican version.

Kudos to The Center for Security Policy. You may turn out to be victorious after all, though it’s a shame the 87th’s Hobbesian choice — a Democrat or a Norquist robot — was so dire. Let’s hope it’s the last time voters are faced with such an option.

By the way, if the 87th had had a robust Tea Party membership, Ramadan would never have won the primary to begin with. The other candidate on the Republican side had a good track record and the endorsement of the Northern Virginia Tea Party. But she needed their boots on the ground to overcome Norquist's money and big names. The TP has a proven track record in races like this, especially when the other Republican or the Democrat is so obviously weak. Ramadan was very weak; he had no track record at all. Nada. But when the big guns and the big money move into a local race, and there is no Tea Party presence to push back against these heavyweights, the Bigs crush the local process.

And that is the biggest shame of this whole affair.