Virginia’s Spanberger – Unfit for Office

The mental health crisis in the United States is nowhere more evident than in its radical politics.

The modern Democrat Party, built on the back of the old FDR coalition in the 1930s and 1940s, has fallen apart like tissue paper in a thunderstorm. Sadly, it has returned to its historical pedigree of embracing force and violence – exemplified by the Jim Crow era, KKK, and today ANTIFA – as an end justifying the means.

Its collapse and fate were sealed in the 1960s and 1970s with the revolutionary brigades of communists and Marxists who rejected not just the Vietnam War, but the very notion of civilized community, individual freedom, and Constitutional government. One has only to revisit their arguments, papers, and books of the era to see who and what they were. The Chicago riots at the DNC convention in 1968 are the explanation point of it all.

To understand the rot and insanity that has overrun the Democrat party, it is necessary to examine how the party rejected the last tidbits of normalcy and just plain caring about what happens to average citizens and the country. Your humble scribe has detailed on many occasions in these pages the Gramscian coup that has enveloped the progression of cultural and political destruction in the country, like a slow-motion demolition project, where crucial support footings are removed one by one.

We are no longer battling between two political party structures. We are in a great struggle of ideas and beliefs, and we find ourselves with the hard work of championing the return of simple common sense, truth-telling, the fellowship of citizenship, and a hope for the future of faith in God, freedom, and constitutional government.

There Are No More “Moderates” on the Left

The capture of the Democrat party by radicals has been so effective that one can count on one or two hands the normal Democrat national figures who claim to be political “moderates,” thinking that the label shields them from the general insanity of their own party. Among them is former Virginia Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, who is now aspiring to be the next Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia as a moderate, yet voted with Joe Biden 100% of the time while in Congress. You can’t square that round hole.

But the truth is that there is no truth there. The word moderate invites a definition that can be judged only by what lies at either end —in this case, philosophies and beliefs. Can you cut them in half? Can you stand in the middle of great questions of life and death? Can you embrace darkness and light at the same time? What lies between individualism and communitarianism?

So the moderate label really only defines a woman who has no core values or discernible beliefs, and a paper-thin resume with little experience outside of the government. She’s like an empty boat drifting where the tide takes it. Her campaign material is topped off with words without substance— banalities and silliness. A “feel-good” introduction greets the reader:

“Abigail has built a record of bringing people together, putting Virginia first, and never backing down from her principles. As Governor, she will strengthen our public schools, make Virginia more affordable, and keep our communities safe.”

A Sprinkling of Fairy Dust

How shall she do these things? She tells us only in more boilerplate trivialities. Earlier this year, Spanberger released her Affordable Virginia Plan, claiming she can bring down healthcare, housing, and energy costs. Of course, who doesn’t want lower prices? Yet there are only ambiguous remedies to combat higher costs. It’s fairy dust.

Presumably, the last two governors, one a Democrat and the current one a Republican, both sought to lower prescription prices and do all they could to keep housing affordable. They had limited impact, of course, because market forces drive both industries, and the federal government is already knee-deep in their regulatory affairs.

And, Heaven forbid, she has an education plan too. “As a mom of three kids in Virginia public schools, Spanberger has a plan to make sure Virginia’s schools are the best in America.” It evidently involves a lot of new money, since she wants “more child care and early childhood education programs, K-12 schools, and institutions of higher education.” (And yet year after year, more money is poured into schools that produce poorer and poorer results while teachers’ unions grow fatter. Gee, wonder if there is a connection there.) Again, her plan is no real plan, just cliches.

While the Spanberger “to-do” list is frustrating for its lack of serious intellectual positioning, alone, it is not enough to make Mrs. Spanberger unfit for office.

Moral Cowardice Is Dangerous

But by lies of omission, Spanberger has presented herself as a moral coward and, by extension, believes you, the voter, are unworthy or incapable of serious discussion of cultural issues that affect many voters directly. She can’t tell the voters the truth. That is why she is unfit for office. Moral cowardness in a chief executive is how disasters happen and destroy, not build, societies.

First is the issue of biological men who think they’re women involved in women’s sports, and the use of same-sex bathrooms and locker rooms, and the real physical and psychological harm to young ladies. In Virginia schools, there have already been major legal cases, including those involving minors. Yet Spanberger, who preens about being a former Postal Inspection Service officer for a short time and a CIA case officer for eight years at the drop of a hat, doesn’t think she owes you, the voter, an answer. After all, she “has three daughters in school,” she says over and over, as though that settles the issue.

She has ignored countless opportunities to state her position, but steadfastly refuses. During her only debate with her opponent, Winsome Earle-Sears, she said, “My answer is that in each local community, decisions should be made between parents and educators, and teachers in each community. It shouldn’t be dictated by politicians.” Clearly, her word salad shows zero concern for young women but plenty of concern for the radical LGBTQ community and the elite donor class in the Democrat Party, pumping huge money into Democrat candidates. So much for “women’s rights” and the long fight to carve out Title IX equal access for female athletes. She doesn’t care, and she doesn’t have the courage to talk to voters about it either.

Taking Pride in Her Shame

The most objectionable thing is that Abigail Spanberger wears her moral feebleness like ribbons at a parade, thinking it makes her sound reasonable and intelligent, camouflaging her lack of core values.

Secondly, even though the US has long-standing federal laws on illegal entry into the country (kind of like the laws that make it illegal for someone to break into your home), Spanberger favors open borders and uncontrolled illegal immigration. While she didn’t try to change existing laws when she was in Congress, she says matter of factly, that the law should not matter, stating “I certainly want to protect every person who might be interested in arriving at the United States, claiming asylum, working here, coming as a refugee — whatever the parameters or the need that begins their desire to move to our country,” Spanberger said in a video posted to X.

In another interview with the Virginia Mercury, Spanberger stated that she would revoke an executive order issued by Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) that requires local law enforcement and state entities to collaborate with ICE agents. So much for her vaunted “federal law enforcement” background. Nor does she ever mention the enormous cost to Virginia taxpayers, because they’re not smart enough to understand the ins and outs of running a country.

Spanberger, during an interview, also called so-called climate change “one of the greatest and most imminent threats to our economy, our national security, and our way of life, and said she will “stand up to attacks against science.”

I’ll let readers figure out what “stand up to attacks against science” means, and if they fit that category. At the same time, of course, she wants to spray good wishes over the energy sector serving Virginia and doubles down on stupid. Windmill and solar are exactly why electric prices are rising so fast.

The Commonwealth is already discovering what Europe and others have learned. “Good wishes” and erecting unreliable, bird-killing, and environmentally disastrous windmills and solar farms made in China are not the future. Thinking the average Virginian doesn’t know better, Spanberger lectures on the “must-do things” without specificity, because enormous donors are putting their feet on the scale.

Finally, Spanberger is for unlimited abortion, without term restrictions. Again, her words are clipped and massaged to make it sound less horrible than it is, and words fail this writer.

The absence of moral clarity and truthfulness makes this a simple choice for Virginians.

Michael Giere writes award-winning commentary and essays on the intersection of politics, culture and faith. He is a critically acclaimed novelist (The White River Series) and short-story writer. A former candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas, he was a senior executive in both the Reagan and the Bush (41) administrations, and in 2016 served on the Trump Transition Team.