Another one bites the dust
Virginia’s Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin only narrowly won to begin with because our side was in a post 2020 hangover and didn’t saddle up for Virginia in 2021. It didn’t suddenly make him a national player. It just made him a very vulnerable and likely one term Governor – and this week proved that.
Youngkin has done serious damage in Virginia, and even though he’s now partially neutered, he’ll continue to do some damage there (if only by holding up much needed progress) until he’s voted out. But not because he’s savvy or influential or the leader of some growing movement. He’s just there by happenstance. He was never going to be savvy enough to use his position to his own advantage.
Yet for two years we had to endure nonstop headlines (from both sides) about how Youngkin’s narrow accidental win, in a state that never really wanted him to begin with and never did embrace him after his win, meant he was somehow a major power player on the national stage. Now Youngkin has announced that he’s not going to run for President. No kidding.
The reality is that there are no rising stars in the Republican ranks, at not in terms of anyone who could be viable on the national stage. You can’t appeal to an extremist unhinged base and the middle. But you can’t be viable nationally unless you win your base and the middle.
But the political media fears it’ll look biased, and thus lose audience members in the middle, if it factually admits that there simply are no viable Republican rising stars. So instead the media (on both sides) actively does PR hype for hapless losers like Youngkin and Ron DeSantis, playing them up as savvy geniuses who are going places, when it knows that’s a lie.
The media figures that these lies are ultimately harmless, because these kinds of losers typically can’t get anywhere even with the media’s help. But given what a joke DeSantis has turned out to be, are we sure he’d have even been reelected in Florida in 2022 if not for the entire media (including MSNBC) constantly hyping him as an inevitable presidential frontrunner? DeSantis is burning Florida to the ground, and there’s a good chance it’s only still happening because our “friends” at MSNBC needed ratings.
Let’s take the win here. We’ve now at least somewhat neutered Glenn Youngkin in Virginia by taking the House of Delegates away from him. And, well, Ron DeSantis keeps neutering himself every time he appears on national television. But let’s also keep in mind that these types of politicians are media creations and nothing more. Instead of cowering to them like they’re dangerously powerful, we need to call them out for just how weak they are. It’s the only way to fend them off, and get them to revert into their natural weak form.
