A straw poll, conducted at an Arlington County Republican Committee meeting the night before the New Hampshire primary, showed more than 60 percent of respondents supporting the presidential bid of Donald Trump.
Holy moly: If Trump forces have wrested the hearts and minds of Northern Virginia Republicans away from the once powerful corporatist “conservative-lite” wing of the Va. GOP, imagine the passion for the former president in the large swath of the Old Dominion below the Rappahannock.
Those who once held sway in the party are not handling the turn of events well. Former Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, having retreated to the insulated, self-satisfied world of academia, has emerged as the patron saint of the pearl-clutchers appalled at what their party has become and aghast that they no longer occupy positions of power within it.
In a recent missive, the former lieutenant governor opined that Democrats will have the last laugh, as (he believes) Trump is the lone Republican contender likely to lose to Joe Biden in November. Of course, a similar view was held by virtually all in the politico-punditocracy in 2016, when Trump was seen as a sure loser to Hillary Clinton. Swing-state voters decided otherwise. For 2024? Time alone will tell.
Those bleating from the political sidelines like Bolling (far from a bad guy, but today largely an dilettantish anachronism) recall the famous line from President Calvin Coolidge about his Commerce Secretary, Herbert Hoover.
“That man,” the normally Silent Cal opined of Hoover nearly a century ago, “has offered me unsolicited advice every day for six years. All of it bad.”
The once-dominant Bolling-style wing of Virginia Republicanism has had eight years to address its changed circumstances and do more than throw rhetorical stones to make its case to the public. Its abject failure to do so is hardly the fault of those who have moved the party in other directions.
