GOP Must Follow the Virginia Blueprint

For decades, Republican Party elected officials have tried to make nice with their Democratic Party colleagues, the liberal media and deep state bureaucrats. Instead of acting like courageous conservative leaders, they ended up delivering policies that were Democrat-lite.

This capitulation led to the catastrophe the country is now facing under the Biden administration. President Joe Biden entered office after a disputed election, with no voter mandate, but that did not stop him from launching the most left-wing agenda of any administration in American history. His first year in office has been an utter catastrophe, the worst start of any American President.

Despite his disastrous results, in one respect, Republicans need to learn from Biden and his fellow Democrats, who do not compromise with their political adversaries or capitulate. They always push forward with an increasingly bold assault on our freedoms and our constitutional rights, while enhancing the power and authority of the government, raising taxes, issuing mandates, and engaging in more unlawful surveillance of the public.

Republicans tend to compromise and surrender, which usually enrages their loyal base of small donors and grassroots supporters. It is one of the reasons that Donald Trump was elected President of the United States in 2016. Republican voters were eager for an outsider, not a captive of the corrupt political system in Washington D.C.

In the last year, Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has done incredible work advocating a freedom-oriented agenda while battling the media, the Democrats, and the Biden administration. Hopefully, the same type of courage will be displayed by the newly elected Republican leaders in Virginia. Fortunately, all the recent signs are very encouraging.

Since 2006, Virginia had been moving to the ideological left. Their voters elected Democrats to the United States Senate and awarded their electoral votes to Democratic presidential candidates. With the influx of more government employees into northern Virginia, the state had turned reliably “blue” in recent years.

Fortunately, that disastrous trend ended in November of 2021 with the election of Republicans to the top three statewide positions and the GOP taking control of the Virginia House of Delegates. Republicans beat the heavily favored Democrats and won these elections in a series of massive upset victories by focusing on education, inflation, and public safety.

These victories showed Republicans across the country the blueprint for how to win and turn the tide against the liberal Democrats. In the 2021 election, the GOP took back the education issue from the Democrats in Virginia. For decades, Democrats won on the issue of education by focusing on teacher pay, spending more money on school facilities and growing the government bureaucracy.

In the election of 2021, Republicans won by standing with parents against teachers and administrators who were peddling the damaging Critical Race Theory curriculum to their children. Republicans maintained that it was parents who had primary authority over their children, not educational bureaucrats.

Virginia GOP gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin espoused these commonsense positions. It helped him defeat his Democratic Party opponent who had previously served as Governor and was supported by the President, celebrities, the media, and most of the Virginia state bureaucracy.

Youngkin won by being a bold gubernatorial candidate and he is ready to govern in that way as well. On his first day as Governor of Virginia, Youngkin took decisive action. He issued nine executive orders and two executive directives. The measures involved a variety of issues such as public education, COVID-19 mandates, climate policy and the economy.

His first order, “delivers on his Day One promise to restore excellence in education by ending the use of divisive concepts, including Critical Race Theory, in public education.” Youngkin’s order also emphasized the importance of allowing students to think for themselves, instead of being indoctrinated. In the order Youngkin declared that “Virginia must renew its commitment to teaching our children the value of freedom of thought and diversity of ideas.”

Eliminating Critical Race Theory was an outstanding start for Youngkin, but he was not finished. Among his other orders, Youngkin eliminated the mask mandate in schools, declared the state “open for business” and removed Virginia from the “Regional Gas Greenhouse Initiative.”

In addition, his two executive directives were outstanding. One reduced “job killing regulations” by 25%, while the other one eliminated the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for state employees.

Youngkin made clear that his aggressive start was the fulfillment of his campaign promise. He said, “we are going to work just like we promised.”

Not only did Youngkin begin his term as Governor with a flourish, but the new Attorney General of Virginia, Jason Miyares, also showed that he is going to act decisively. The day before his inauguration, he fired thirty state government employees, including seventeen attorneys, from his office. His spokesperson noted that Miyares and the former Attorney General had “very different visions for the office.”

Unlike his predecessor, Miyares pledged to prioritize public safety, after Virginia experienced a massive increase in crime. It is a major reason state voters elected him. In a recent essay, Miyares made it clear that he intends to fulfill his campaign promises and will end “the criminal-first, victim-last policies that have led to Virginia’s highest murder rate in decades.”

Fortunately, the new leadership team in Virginia is serious about changing their state and taking courageous actions. They are showing Republican Party elected officials how to decisively fulfill campaign promises. These resolute Virginia leaders should be the role models for the Republican Party in 2022 and beyond.

The days of playing nice with socialist Democrats must end. It is imperative that Republican Party leaders understand the stakes involved in the upcoming elections. The future of the United States of America will be determined in the 2022 and 2024 elections.

Republicans can no longer govern by making corrupt deals with progressive Democrats and trying to impress their enemies in the left-wing media. GOP voters want to save America and Republican Party elected officials must lead or get out of the way.

Jeff Crouere is a native New Orleanian and his award winning program, “Ringside Politics,” airs nationally on Real America’s Voice Network, AmericasVoice.News weekdays at 7 a.m. CT and from 7-11 a.m. weekdays on WGSO 990-AM & Wgso.com. He is a political columnist, the author of America’s Last Chance and provides regular commentaries on the Jeff Crouere YouTube channel and on Crouere.net. For more information, email him at [email protected]sidepolitics.com

Image by Glenn Youngkin via Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.