What Others say about Bob Marshall: Integrity Matters!

Our state delegates convention vote is coming up in a month.

If the values in this video matter to you, and you’re heading to the convention to vote, I sure hope you’ll consider Bob Marshall as your best choice.

As the transportation debate rages on in Richmond, where is Jim Gilmore?

It’s been nearly two weeks since the State Supreme Court wiped out the unconstitutional taxes imposed by HB 3202.  The legislature has been engulfed by a cacophony of voices on how to “fix transportation.”  Sadly, my ideas have yet to inspire a good pair of legislative lungs.

For the most part, far too many Republicans are willing to force local government to raise their taxes (what Jim Bowden dubbed “the son of Frankenstein” in a phone call with me last week), while the Democrats are pushing a combination of onerous sate taxes aand onerous local taxes.  Bob Marshall, of course, is determined to stop any tax increase from replacing the ones he just sued to erase.

However, there is one voice whose silence on this matter has been deafening – Jim Gilmore.

Throughout the entire debate on HB3202, Gilmore said not a word.  I can actually understand why – he was running for president at the time.  Now, however, as a Virginia GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate, he has no excuse.

To the extent that the Establishment GOP backs anyone in this race, it backs Gilmore.  If he were to tell Bill Howell et al to cut this nonsense out, there is a good chance we can get through this summer without any tax increases.  At the very least, Gilmore could reveal that he still has his ear closer to the ground than the power brokers in Richmond.  Yet he says nothing.  Why?

I don’t want to hear about the car tax reduction.  I credit him for that, but it was ten years ago.  We are in the midst of a battle for the heart and soul of the Republican party right now, and Gilmore is repeating Jerry Kilgore’s mistake of sitting on the sidelines and hoping it all goes away.

This is a terrible message to send to both the party activists and the millions of Virginians who have emphatically demanded that taxes not be raised.  After all, if Jim Gilmore remains silent for fear of alienating Bill Howell, Bob McDonnell, and other Richmond Republicans, how will he fare against the “Old Bulls” in the Senate when it comes time to stand on principle?  How can we be certain he will be a conservative Virginian first and a Republican politician second in 2009 when he won’t even do it in 2008?

The way I see it, Gilmore has three choices.  He can throw in with his new-found Establishment buddies and make it clear he is no longer the anti-tax man he was; he can remain silent and reveal that he has lost the courage of his convictions; or he can take a chance, stand on principle, and endear himself to millions of Virginians inside and outside the Republican Party. 

Until and unless Gilmore takes that final option, the reality is this: only one Senate candidate is standing up for Virginians against higher taxes today – and that man is Bob Marshall.

Cross-posted to the right-wing liberal

Bob Marshall: A Man of the ‘Times’

Did you catch today’s Washington Times article?  Our man Bob is credited with taking the do-nothings to task.

READ MORE

Why the Presidential nominee will need Bob Marshall as our Senate nominee

Earlier tonight (OK, last night, as we’re now past midnight here), I detailed my troubles (and what I believe are the troubles of most Republicans) with the current crop of presidential candidates.  I ended that post as such:

In short, the typical Republican voter will need something extra to be encouraged to vote – and volunteer – for the Republican ticket.  I’ll explain why I think that, and how it impacts Virginia, in later posts.

Well, it’s only going to be one post, but here’s why I think “something extra” is required – and by “something extra,” I mean a better candidate down-ballot: asking Republicans to play defense with their vote doesn’t work.

We tend to forget this lesson, and are thus doomed to relearn it, repeatedly.  Remember 1996, when we were told legions of anti-Clinton voters would put Bob Dole in the White House?  Dole won 41% of the vote.  Two years later, we heard the same nonsense about voters angry at the Lewinksy scandal.  It turned out Republicans were angrier about the party’s weakness on spending issues, and Clinton became the first Democratic president not to lose seats in a mid-term election since 1934.  In 2000, the same logic got the GOP 48% of the vote and a cliff-hanger of an election.  Only when Republicans could vote for something (as in 2002 and 2004) did the party regain its footing (only to lose it again by going back on defense in 2005). 

We saw the same thing here in Virginia.  In 2005, we were all supposed to fall in line behind Jerry Kilgore to stop Tim Kaine.  Kaine beat Kilgore by 6 points.  Two years later, the sam defensive mentality led to the transportation tax hike of 2007 and the loss of our State Senate majority,

Today, every single Republican candidate (save Paul, whose prospects for victory are minuscule) are hoping to use the anti-Clinton wave to win the White House.  The fact that no such wave existed in 1996, 1998, or even 2000 has not deterred them.

The fact remains, however, that Republicans only win when their voters are motivated to vote for their candidates, not merely against their opponents.

This is where our Senate race comes in.

Virginia will be a competitive state this year.  The Democrats will be energized by their nominee (either the first women or the first African-American to be nominated by a major party for president).  We will need similar energy on our side.

Only one candidate can produce that energy: Bob Marshall.

For anti-tax, limited government voters, Bob Marshall offers a 16-year record of fighting tax increases and government spending, to the point of currently suing to eliminate the unconstitutional regional taxes in HB3202.  Jim Gilmore presents an incomplete record on car-tax reduction, a spending increase that was higher in percentage termsthan Mark Warner’s, and absolute silence on HB3202.  If this were 1998, Gilmore may still have been able to motivate and inspire limited government Republicans to walk through walls for him.  However, it is 2008, and the only candidate who can do that is Marshall.

For pro-life voters, Marshall is the ideal.  He is unabashedly pro-life, without exception.  Gilmore, by contrast, has an eight-week “choice” window.  Pro-life voters may support Gilmore in November, but they won’t move heaven and earth to get him elected; only Marshall can inspire them to do that.

For national security voters, the difference is glaring.  Jim Gilmore still hasn’t disavowed his June 2007 op-ed when he came out against the surge.  Marshall has done no such thing.  The folks at National Review have already noticed this from Gilmore, and have refused to support him as a result.  Again, Gilmore will have far more trouble with the “base” on this than Marshall.

Conventional wisdom holds that the Republican perceived as more “moderate” has the better shot at winning the election.  I greatly dispute this in every election  However, in this election, the CW loses all validity.  Nothing we do can keep the Democrats at home on election day, but we can keep angry right-wingers at home by nominating the wrong candidate.  Those who think Mark Warner or Hillary Clinton will “scare” them into voting must not forget that such tactics did not work against Bill Clinton or Tim Kaine.

The Republicans need to vote for a candidate, rather than against the Democrat.  If they don’t have that at the presidential level, it is imperative that they have it at the Senatorial level.  Marshall’s nomination will not only make the Senate seat more winnable, it may be the only way we can assure t Virginia’s electoral votes go to the Republican ticket.

Cross-posted to the right-wing liberal

Another Blogger for Bob

Eric Martin of Rappahannock Red becomes the latest blogger to support Bob Marshall.

Last year, Eric was a Republican endorsee for the Spotsylvania County School Board.  He will now bring that experience and energy to the Marshall piece of the blogosphere.

Welcome Eric!

Cross-posted to the right-wing liberal

. . . and the clouds parted as the sun shone throughout the land . . .

Delegate Bob Marshall makes it official.

The first (albeit weak) response from the Gilmore bloggers

Spank That Donkey has been one of the most diligent defenders of Jim Gilmore on the Comments section of this blog.  He has now shifted to posting his responses.  I’m happy for that; regardless of our obvious disagreement on the U.S. Senate race, Spanky and I are friends, and I’m more than happy to send traffic his way, as he has sent traffic mine.  Also, I know of at least one reader of this space who would like to hear from the Gilmore side before coming to a decision on whom to support (Gilmore or Marshall).

I must  say, however, that Spanky needs to make better arguments than Gilmore’s college tuition freeze policy.  For starters, supporters of limited government (which is still a large chunk of the GOP base) are not going to be happy about the notion that Gilmore should deserve their vote because he threw more money at higher education in this state.

More to the point, Spanky’s assertion that this will help Gilmore in northern Virginia is almost laughable.  Still, here’s his argument:

How will this help Gov. Gilmore’s electability in NOVA? Last time I checked a lot of college graduates live in NOVA, along with the parents of those kids they helped put through college.

The only problem with that logic is this: not every college graduate in northern Virginia went to a state-funded school.  In fact, as can be seen in this State Council of Higher Education in Virginia report from 2001 (the last year of the freeze), the NoVa’s portion of state-funded undergrads at four-year college (35.1%) is hardly much greater than its portion of the overall population (31.4% – US Census Bureau).

I wouldn’t put a 3.7% variance in undergraduate attendance from six years ago up against a Delegate from the region who won 58% of the vote in a year the Republicans were getting killed in the region.  Then again, since I’m supporting that Delegate (Bob Marshall) I need not rely on such slender reeds.

Cross-posted to the right-wing liberal

The car-tax relief: is it spending or a tax cut?

The answer for our purposes is . . . it doesn’t matter; Gilmore was still more spendthrift than Mark Warner was.

How Bob Marshall will win (Part II)

Note: Part I can be found here. 

What with Christmas now receding from the rear-view mirror, and 2008 barrelling down the road, it is time to once again focus on our upcoming U.S. Senate race, and why Bob Marshall is the best choice.

 Almost none of the reaction I have encountered questions Marshall’s record; this does not surprise me, as the record is fantastic.  Instead, the main concern seems to be about electability, and its mainly coming from folks who are not in Northern Virginia.  I can understand that, too – if you haven’t followed Northern Virginia politics, you wouldn’t see how Marshall has repeatedly defied every effort by the lefties to get rid of him.  IN fact, as I mentioned earlier, Marshall ran ten points better than his up-ballot State Senate candidates last month.  He even beat the Democratic Senate candidates by six points (58% for Marshall, 52% for the Democratic Senate hopefuls – three of whom went on to win their seats, while the fourth held the Republican victor below 50%).

Also, as I must mention again, Marshall’s district at the top of the ballot (State Senate) was more Democratic than the rest of the state (the Dems only won 48% of the vote statewide).  Translated to a Presidential election, that means Marshall could pull out a win even if the GOP nominee loses Virginia 60-40, which is all but certain not to happen here.

Yes, I know, that’s a rough, swiss-cheese-like extrapolation, but my larger point still holds: Bob Marshall can win Democratic and independent votes; indeed he has for the last 16 years.

Two ancillary concerns spread from this, one of which was presented by outgoing Senator Brandon Bell, while the other has been unspoken so far.  Bell expressed his concern (see comment five here) thusly: “guys running in a generally homogeneous state house district have issues speaking to the concerns of broader constituency-in this case the entire state.”  The second one deals with whether Marshall - a Delegate since 1991 – can handle the shifting political sands that Virginia has witnessed in this decade.

Oddly enough, both concerns can be addressed in the same manner – by looking at Marshall’s district.  In the fall of 2001, Marshall represented 47,108 voters.  This was already larger than most districts despite the redistricting of the past spring, but it was nothing compared to what was coming.

Last month, the number of active voters in Marshall’s district totalled a whopping 81,709.  That’s an increase of over 34,600 voters over six years.  To give the reader an idea of how dramatic that is, the following is the list of Delegates who had fewer than 34,000 total voters in 2007: Matt Lohr (R-26th; 32,630), Adam Ebbin (D-49th; 28,981), Jackson Miller (R-50th; 32,214), Franklin Hall (D-69th; 31,041), Dwight C. Jones (D-70th; 33,528), Jennifer McLellan (D-71st; 32,076), Paula Miller (D-87th; 28,179), Kenneth Cooper Alexander (D-89th; 32,765), Angie Howell (D-90th; 30,468), and Lynwood Lewis, Jr. (D-100th; 30,629).  That’s a count of ten Delegate who have fewer total voters than Bob Marshall has in post-2001 voters alone.

For Mr. Bell (who I’m guessing is more familiar with Matt Lohr’s District than any other on the list), think of it this way - take Matt Lohr’s entire district and move into Marshall’s; you’d still be almost 2,000 voters short of what actually happened there.  In other words, Marshall has felt the demographic wave in northern Virginia as much as any other elected official (yes, I’m answering second concern first), but as Prince William and Loudoun County shifted to the Democrats (Kaine and Webb carried both), Marshall has remained strong.

Hopefully, this by itself will allso show Brandon and others that Marshall’s district is hardly “homogenous.”  Still, just in case, I have one more interesting tidbit to mention.  With over 81,700 active voters, Marshall represents more voters than Yvonne Miller, Ralph Northam, and Henry L. Marsh, III.  Here’s the significance: the aforementioned three are State Senators (Marshall easily has the most populous district in the House; his closest competition on that are Loudoun delegates Bill May and David Poisson – neither of which are within 20,000 voters of him).

For what it’s worth, Marshall also won more votes (14,826) than five Senators, although only two (Harry Blevins, R-18, and Marsh) had opponents; the other three were Miller, Maime Locke (D-2), and Ken Stolle (R-8).  Of course, the next time Stolle opens his mouth to justify tax hikes, runaway spending, or some other nonsense, feel free to remind him that Bob Marshall won over 1,500 more votes than he did.

To conclude (I know, waaay too late), Bob Marshall is no ordinary Delegate, and his district is no ordinary district.  He has stayed true to his convictions, and because of that, he has succeeded in a dramatically changing environment that sunk many Republicans of weaker stomachs.  For these reasons, he is the ideal candidate, and will be a terrific Senator.

Cross-posted to the right-wing liberal