Sunday, March 20, 2005 :::
"Good Copy" Heads to Hollywood
Reading this morning's Shapiro playbill makes me think "Good Copy" spent his vacation holed up in a basement watching old movies. How else can we explain allusions to the Odd Couple, the Keystone Cops and Martin and Lewis?
Well, maybe he did more than hunker over the ol' betamax. Just glancing over the rest of the piece, we see references to Doug Wilder, Grover Norquist, Marshall Coleman, Olver North, Russ Potts and George Allen.
With that line-up like that, we know "Good Copy" has been brewing up a first-rate rhetorical gale. It's deeply disappointing, however, to read no mention of Jim Gilmore...whose inclusion would have made this a perfect storm of a column.
But like so much else that gushes from the deeply maligned keyboard in Jeff's cubicle, this column roars mightily, but petters out long before it reaches the shore:
But Kilgore may have to explain the support of Virginia's best-known Republican moderate, John Warner.
Conservatives still fume that Warner denied the party a U.S. Senate seat in 1994 by refusing to back Iran-Contra figure Oliver L. North. Warner recruited an independent, former Attorney General J. Marshall Coleman, who pulled 11 percent of the vote. That helped tip the election to the embattled Democratic incumbent, Charles S. Robb.
Further, Warner's betrayal more than a decade ago apparently has influenced another generation of Republican malcontents, who -- like Warner fret that their party is moving outside the mainstream.
State Sen. H. Russell Potts Jr. of Winchester is running for governor as an independent, potentially denying Kilgore votes in a region that should be a gimme for Republicans, the northern Shenandoah Valley.
Potts' pitch recalls the Warner appeal in the North-Coleman-Robb contest: Virginians should put principle ahead of party.
And who said a Warner endorsement of Jerry Kilgore only had an upside?
Well, there is a huge downside, Jeff. Warner's support has deprived you of the narrative you crave: the irreconcilable divide among state Republicans. Without this narrative, you're job has become so much harder. Pitching a fit in print will not change the facts. Kilgore has the top of the party buttoned to his collar and no amount of bluster from you will tear it away. And as for Potts siphoning votes away in the upper Valley...keep hope alive, big guy! But until then, stay on the meds.
::: posted by Norman Leahy at 3/20/2005
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