National Review Online
Wednesday, November 03, 2021
Glenn Youngkin unlocked the key to
electoral success in a Virginia that hadn’t elected a Republican statewide in
twelve years and didn’t seem likely to do so again, given the state’s blue turn
in the Trump years.
What Youngkin needed to do was obvious if not necessarily
easy — unite Trump and anti-Trump voters, and maintain big Republican margins
in rural areas while eroding Democratic margins in the suburbs. He succeeded
brilliantly.
There’s a danger in overinterpreting one election outcome
on a night when there was clearly an anti-Democratic wave around the country,
in evidence from New Jersey, where the Republican Jack Ciattarelli is still
locked in a too-close-to-call race against Democratic governor Phil Murphy, to
Pennsylvania, where Republicans swept judicial races, to Long Island, where the
GOP stormed back to power.
But the Virginia gubernatorial race has been a national
focus for months, and there are clearly lessons in how Youngkin prevailed in a
state that Biden carried by 10 points and where, until recently, the GOP seemed
bent on self-immolation.
Youngkin realized his coalition had to consist of voters
firmly attached to Trump and those turned off by him. He welded them together
by avoiding criticisms of Trump while maintaining an arm’s length from him
personally, taking care to brand himself as a relatable and inoffensive
suburban dad, and — importantly — emphasizing the cultural issues around
education that resonated with and motivated both pools of voters.
Youngkin rightly and unapologetically hit “critical race
theory,” the rubric for racialist indoctrination and 1619-style critiques of
America, hard. But his message on education was much broader. He defended high
standards and advanced learning, inveighed against school closures, talked
about the need for greater school safety, and pushed back against explicit
content in education, all the while advocating higher pay for teachers.
This suite of issues found a powerful common theme when
Terry McAuliffe said in a debate that parents shouldn’t be involved in what
schools teach to their kids. Given the moral high ground on parental
involvement, Youngkin pounded the advantage home, as McAuliffe — partaking of his
party’s high-handedness on the issue — didn’t realize his mistake until too
late.
He also focused on pocketbook economic issues, while the
mood music of his campaign, literally from beginning to end, was upbeat and
unifying.
Incredibly enough, Youngkin improved on Trump’s margins
in rural areas, and the exit polls showed him besting Trump among white women
without a college education. On top of this, he made gains in all geographic
areas of the state. The result suggests that the party’s grip on rural areas
and small towns may be enduring even without Trump on the ballot, whereas the
scale of the losses in the suburbs was a reaction to Trump himself.
Youngkin’s win, and the other wreckage around the map for
Democrats, presumably makes passing Joe Biden’s reconciliation bill even harder
and signals a bleak midterm election cycle ahead for Democrats. But his victory
could be most significant in showing a path ahead for the GOP, if it can take
it.
No comments:
Post a Comment