Posted on 11/11/2019 3:56:57 AM PST by Kaslin
Ever since its citizens liked Ike in ‘52 (other than one brief hiccup in 1964 when Johnson trounced Goldwater almost everywhere), the Commonwealth of Virginia had voted reliably Republican, until 2008. That year, in a wave election, Democrat Barack Obama won several states Republicans typically win, like Florida, North Carolina and Arizona. One could have been forgiven, then, for thinking Virginia would come back to the fold after the hipness wore off and the cold, hard reality of quasi-socialist governance became all-too-real. After all, this is Old Dominion we’re talking about, the land of Monticello and Williamsburg, of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and more prominent founding Americans than anywhere else. From Nathaniel Bacon to George Mason to Patrick Henry and countless more, freedom and resistance to tyranny have been an indelible part of that great state’s heritage.
But sadly, the blue never wore off. It only grew deeper and more dominant, until last week, when the tiniest tint of red faded into the darkness like the last sunset of a dying man, never to return.
That’s right, folks. With a Democratic governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, both United States senators, seven of 11 representatives, and now both State houses, the Commonwealth of Virginia is now officially a blue state on par with the socialistic dystopias of California, New York, and New England. It’s been a long time coming, albeit a slow, gradual march to the abyss, but the land of the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and “sic semper tyrannis” has now become the land of the snowflakes and social justice warriors.
Which leaves many wondering, how on earth did this happen? Fox News host Laura Ingraham’s Wednesday night analysis may have gotten the attention of Media Matters, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less true. To Ingraham, the “road to Democratic dominance” in the formerly right-of-center state was paved with demographic changes that began taking place long before Trump’s 2015 trip down that New York City escalator.
“Virginia's foreign-born population nearly doubled from 2000 and 2017,” said Ingraham, “and these immigrants are mostly concentrated in Northern Virginia. Fairfax County, Loudoun County, Prince William County, outside of D.C., and they are altering the demographic makeup of the state - and, as The Washington Post and others have pointed out, the electorate.”
Quoting The Washington Post’s reporting, the Fox News host noted that a full third of Fairfax County’s population is now comprised of foreign-born individuals. “Half of the elementary school students there speak a foreign language at home,” said Ingraham. “And since immigrants are more likely to vote Democrat, well, this, of course has dragged the electorate to the left. That's just a fact of life.”
As much as the left wishes to curb discussion about such things, she’s not lying. The Hispanic percentage of Virginia’s population alone went from 7.9 percent in 2010 to 9.6 percent in 2018, accounting for almost half of the state’s overall population growth during that time. While most are undoubtedly good people, hard workers, and solid economic contributors, the fact that they come from ‘big government’ countries with little regard for personal freedom makes them more likely, sadly, to vote for such policies in their new country. And exit polling shows that 60 to 70 percent of them do, without fail, election after election. Such voting behaviors, of course, are likely over time to lend themselves to turning their new homes into the same sort of hellholes they left, but for whatever reason, most are either unable or unwilling to see the tragic irony.
Hispanics and other immigrants aren’t the only factors, of course. Northern Virginia has experienced an exodus of people seeking an escape from the bleak economic conditions of both Maryland and Washington D.C. for years. They too fail to see the irony as they poison their new home with the same failed policies as their old ones. Either way, demographics will always be destiny. It’s a fact the left has understood for decades, but Republicans have either failed to see or feared to point out.
I live in deep-red Tennessee, almost literally a stone’s throw from the Virginia border. My town, Bristol, has a half in Tennessee and a half in Virginia. Already, many are wondering how a $15 minimum wage will affect small businesses already struggling to survive on the Virginia side. Others worry about new gun legislation that will automatically make criminals out of the law-abiding and take away their right to defend themselves. Several I know personally are at least talking about moving over here to Tennessee, and freedom, and state governance by people who, despite their faults, at least understand the concept of basic economics.
Obviously, elections have consequences, and Virginians will get to bear the consequences of their poor choices, and that quite soon. Look for bloated budgets, higher taxes, economic misery, and more social unrest as Virginia slowly but surely goes the way of California. It’s sad, tragic even, but in another sense it’s also part of the beauty of federalism and why the nation’s founders left the states the powers not expressly given to the federal government. Virginians failed to learn the lessons of quasi-socialist California and others, so they’ll just have to experience it themselves. It’ll be a lesson that we Tennesseans and other red state residents can observe and hopefully learn from firsthand - never, ever, ever go full blue.
The worst of all of them are the “educwted” whites ...many in late middle age...who should know better but nonetheless are avid democrats. These are the filth that are ruining America IMHO.
South Carolina, esp. Charleston, is still mostly sane.
As much as I sympathize with you, I figure at some point there’ll be no where left to run. My ancestors helped settle western Virginia; their graves lie in various plots that line one picturesque state road in particular through the Alleghenys. After a couple generation hiatus, I’m going to move back to the area and live out my days. Seems right to finish where it began.
Ayn Rand, Capitalism - The Unknown Ideal
I dont rule out coming back. In fact when socialism fails, as it always does, Northern Va, Tidewater, and Richmond will not be happy places. It may become better after that. Maybe.
That is how our glidepath as a country will change away from socialism - when it fails to deliver utopia. If and when one of these progressives gets elected president, some time after both houses of Congress go progressive, the gears of industry stop. Some states will get a preview. Virginia will be one of them.
Mississippi or Kentucky sound like the next home for us.
I think it's probably young people and upper middle class professionals, not working class folks, who may like country music and be easier to assimilate.
Virginia's a special case, though. Because it's the national capital you have government workers as well as recent immigrants who go to NYC, DC, LA, because they don't know the rest of the country when the arrive here.
Agreed VA is a special case.
Most jobless urban immigrants from Chicago, Flint, Cleveland, etc do not listen to Country & Western.
But some do listen to Kanye West and to TBN.
You’re absolutely right about the fault line in Virginia’s GOP. But that internal civil war started long before warner’s third-party endorsement back in ‘94.
If you get a chance, read “The Dynamic Dominion: Realignment and the rise of Competition in Virginia, 1945-1980” by Frank B Atkinson. He wrote the book back in 1991 and i believe it has been updated since then.
Sorry, but it was the greatest generation and the generation before them who voted for FDR’s socialism and LBJ’s great society crap that helped establish a permanent underclass.
The transgenders. The faggots. The pot smoking libertarian addicts. The 60 million murdered unborn Americans.
No, all that came out of the baby boomer generation.
Virginia is just as easy to explain as is DC itself...many,many,*many* residents are getting some kind of government check.
They voted for FDR who promoted socialist policies. Ditto for LBJ. You cannot blame boomers for that. No generation (which is just another phony group identity thing that leftist love to create to divide people) has the corner on virtue or vice. Boomers are often criticized just because there are lots of them and, thus, had a lot of influence on the culture. It was leftist jerks like Walter Cronkite who pretended that all boomers were hippies out smoking weed and participating in demonstrations. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Yes, home to the 1930s.
What is masquerading as the democrat party today is hardcore communism. They are not the same. Only a fool would suggest otherwise. Or somebody woefully uneducated. Which are you?
Google "45 Goals of Communism for America." Pay particular attention to #15.
And, don't bother responding to me again. I'm not wasting any more time reading your idiotic posts.
And, don’t bother responding to me again.
Then why should I read the link in your reply?
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