Youngkin is willing to racebait, pretend support "the big lie", and culture wars to win

[Demovictory9]

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-10-30/virginia-governor-race-shows-how-trumpism-rotted-the-entire-republican-party



Youngkin is no Donald Trump, but neither is he disavowing the worst of Trump. He’s using weasel words, but all the same he’s corroding faith in our elections, exploiting racial divisions and embracing phonculture wars. Trump says what he thinks, and his cultists love it; Youngkin says what they want to hear, just without the bile and bombast that has cost the party the support of many moderates, college-educated Republicans and independent voters in the suburbs, and turned the once-red state a purplish blue.

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Most effective for Youngkin, it seems, have been his racially tinged appeals regarding schools. The polls suggest they’ve resonated with just the voters he needs: both Trumpian conservatives and more moderate parents in vote-rich suburbs of northern Virginia, outside Washington, and Richmond to the south. But his appeals are demagoguery and worse.

He vows to ban critical race theory, the academic study of systemic racism that isn’t even taught in Virginia’s K-through-12 classes. He’s co-opted a favorite new conspiracy theory on the right, falsely claiming that McAuliffe contacted “his friend Joe Biden” to get Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland to “sic the FBI” on Virginians at local school board meetings protesting “CRT” and vaccine and mask mandates.

[BlueTsunami2018]

1. Whatever it takes to win.

They are simply better at politics than we are. They’ll do anything to achieve the results they want. That’s why we will eventually be under authoritarian rule. They just want it more.

[walkingman]

2. Exactly - Rhetoric is nice but you have to get elected in order

to actually do anything. We should realize that it is better to beg forgiveness than seek permission. We are being outplayed.

[Demovictory9]

3. yeah, they do seem to want it more. not sure what dems do in response

[malletgirl02]

4. To be fair

It is kind of hard to fight back when the Republicans are accusing the Democrats of what they are doing, and the media is pushing the Republican lies.

[Celerity]

5. Blunt, concise, brutally frank, and unfortunately likely true.