The Virginia Legacy

Investors.com ^ | January 19, 2010 | INVESTORS BUSINESS DAILY Staff

[Kaslin]

Politics: As attention fixed on Massachusetts' election, the counterrevolution against Obama's Washington had already begun in Virginia, where Gov. Bob McDonnell pledged himself to pushing back federal power.

Like this week's senatorial contest in the Commonwealth, last November's gubernatorial election in the Old Dominion was seen as a referendum on Obama's megalomania. A former state attorney general, McDonnell waged a flawlessly positive campaign against lackluster legislator Creigh Deeds.

Democrats blamed McDonnell's win on Deeds' performance-challenged campaign — just as they pointed fingers in New Jersey at incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine for his loss to Chris Christie. But more astute observers registered seismic electoral activity up and down the Eastern Seaboard that shook Obama's far-left agenda.

Last Saturday McDonnell mounted the steps of the state capitol — designed, he reminded Virginians, by Gov. Thomas Jefferson; cornerstone laid by Gov. Patrick Henry — and called for a new "Commonwealth of Opportunity." He traced the state's resistance to tyranny to Capt. John Smith's landing in 1607.

For a Virginia governor's inauguration, such references could be dismissed as boilerplate. But McDonnell signaled an intent to revive the 10th Amendment (added to the Constitution by Virginians James Madison and George Mason), which reserves to the states all powers not explicitly granted to the federal government.