Beware Cooch

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				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
Beware Cooch				October 28, 2009

If, as a result of the last presidential election, you thought that Virginia was turning purple, think again.

If recent poll numbers hold true, Virginia is on the verge of not only turning a very dark shade of red, but, in the case of attorney general candidate Ken Cuccinelli, heading into the scarlet zone.

While Bob McDonnell has been distancing himself from a master’s thesis in which he blasted working women, singles, gays and fornicators, Cuccinelli has unveiled an agenda that makes Jim Gilmore look almost Obamian.

Though most attorneys general limit their activities to giving legal advice to the legislature, the governor and state institutions (you recall that Attorney General Bob McDonnell gave Tommy Norment a limited go-ahead to wax fuzzy-wuzzy with William & Mary), Cuccinelli has a political and social agenda that will knock your socks into the laundry basket.

To begin with, he envisions himself as a bulwark against the pregnant treachery of the federal government.

Since he deems global warming a hoax, he will oppose any attempt by the feds to impose emissions standards on Virginia companies, including, I assume, coal plants.

And health reform? Forget it. Not only will he insist that Virginia secede from anything that smacks of a public option, but any federal reform whatsoever will be rejected. So, if you’ve lost your job or can’t get health insurance because of a preexisting condition, Cooch, as his allies call him, is probably not your man. He thinks that private insurers are doing a Brownie-like heckuva job. He also opposes stem cell research, abortion and the clinics that provide it.

You’ll also be relieved to know that our new attorney general will “enforce” the constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. What that means I have no idea, unless he thinks that uppity gays will be surreptitiously canoodling about to find someone who will illegally marry them. Or that gays married in other, more progressive states will be invading Virginia to set up shop because of the gay-friendly aura that hovers over their newly-discovered Virginian Nirvana.

He and his corevolutionary conservative McDonnell will certainly declare illegal the dictum of Governors Kaine and Warner that disallows discrimination against gays in the workplace.

In short, if you’re looking for a draconian huckster of homophobia, vote for Cooch.

Similarly, if you think that gun control is a laughable, un-American concept, Cuccinelli is your man. Despite the fact that in a recent Virginian-Pilot poll, over 80% of the respondents favored closing the loophole that allows the sale of guns at gun shows without any background checks, Cuccinelli will have none of it.

As noted in a recent New York Times editorial, “The loophole closure is far from the dominant issue in the multifarious Virginia campaign, even if most voters realize that the Virginia Tech spree brings gun control closer to home. Those latest newspaper poll results show the people are speaking. Too bad that the politicians are not listening.”

Even worse, Cuccinelli disavows the notion that guns should be denied those whom, on the basis of their past records, law enforcement officials deem unfit to have weapons. Only court rulings, says Cooch, should deprive people of their guns.

Again this is consistent with Cucinnelli’s legislative record. He voted for the right of gun owners to carry weapons in bars and restaurants and for the records of concealed gun owners to be beyond the purview of the Freedom of Information Act.

Finally, as a prime distiller of national purity, Cuccinelli has pressed legislation that would deny citizenship to any child born in this country to illegal immigrants. And just to make sure that the xenophobic cake is properly iced, he would refuse unemployment benefits to those whose English language credentials are not up to snuff. So much for the melting pot caper.

Why ultraconservatives like McDonnell and Cuccinelli are so far ahead in the polls is hard to say, though much of the problem lies with the Deeds campaign. Eschewing the Democratic principles and fervor that won Virginia for Obama, Deeds has clung to the imaginary middle and utterly failed to clarify his agenda.

The resultant danger is that, while McDonnell and Cuccinelli tout moderation by emphasizing issues related to transportation, education, crime and jobs, there lurks behind their moderate serenity a retrograde, us vs. them social philosophy that will return Virginia to a totally unacceptable past of exclusion and an archaic paranoia relative to the developing world beyond her borders.

I have little doubt that even today Ken Cuccinelli would endorse without hesitancy most of the conclusions in McDonnell’s master’s thesis. And that is not where Virginia wants to be.