Glenn Youngkin joins GOP’s Kinder Gubernatorial Team, Gentler Killers

NSbased on his early moves to dismiss prominent issues like abortion and gun rights, Governor-elect of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin is joining the ranks of famous GOP middle-class governors like Larry Hogan of Maryland (68% approve), Charlie Baker of Massachusetts (69% approve) and Chris Sununu of New Hampshire (54% agree).

You could call them the kinder, softer killers of the party, borrowing the line from George HW Bush, whose chief of staff was John, Chris Sunnunu’s father.

That crew now includes Youngkin, who can only serve one term under Virginia law, but the sky is the limit for him in Republican politics if he can expand the model he follows. We follow to turn the red state back. bringing college-educated suburban women back to the GOP lifestyle.

Hogan is term-limited beyond next year and because “Everybody loves Larry” he will be joking about running for president in 2024, while Baker leaves while things get better after two terms rather than facing both Trump-backed main opponents and then a tough general election in a predominantly Democratic country. Sununu has just announced that he is seeking a fourth two-year term after rejecting his party’s call to run for the Senate, a dismissal in his view.

“I’d rather push myself 120 mph to bring victory to New Hampshire than slow down, end up on Capitol Hill debating partisan politics to no avail,” he said, thawing. crushed the hopes of the GOP leaders, who saw him as a sure bet to topple the Democrats and win back the Senate.

Follow washington articlesof the poll. He won 74% of white women without a college degree while Democrat Terry McAuliffe won 61% of white women with a college degree. Although hundreds of thousands of women spontaneously showed up to march in Washington and protest against Trump’s presidency in 2017, more than half of white women (55%) voted for him in 2020.

By emphasizing education and economics, talking softly, and emphasizing his suburban father’s credentials, Youngkin is different enough from Trump to win back the white women he needs to downsize. gap in Virginia in what initially looked like a race for McAuliffe, a prominent former governor seeking to claim a second term faces a political novice who has spent his his career for the vast fortune of the Carlyle Group, a political holding company in a state where Democrats had held every office in the state for ten years.

But Youngkin was adept at dodging, weaving, and not saying much, and McAuliffe made the fatal mistake of appearing to dismiss parents’ concerns about the school curriculum. Youngkin’s biggest compliment at the rallies was his promise to ban critical racism from Virginia schools, where it’s not taught but has become the media for all that parents do. dislike about pandemic policy and politics.

By the time Youngkin won, the pros had seen it coming—but not until then. He was an amateur, but his ability to evade allowed voters to see him as something more or less – you can’t be quite sure what that is. Even now, a month after the transition, it’s a game of cat and mouse. Emphasis on his current position on campaign-defining issues, such as privately telling anti-abortionists that he will “commit a crime” after being elected and will not “contempt you” ‘ and promising to overturn gun restrictions put in place by Democrats, his transition office released a statement saying Glenn was “laying the groundwork” for a “Day One Game Plan to restore publicity”. excel in education, make our communities safer, lower the cost of living, make government work for the people, and drive job growth.”

Abortion is not part of Youngkin’s “Plan One Day” although he said when pressed that he would “entertain” a pain threshold bill that would limit abortions to 20 weeks. On guns, he pushed aside a request to remove gun control advocate Lori Haas from the state Crime Commission. Haas was appointed by Goveror McAuliffe after her daughter was among those killed in the 2007 Virginia Tech mass shooting. Governor Northam reappointed her.

Right-wing activists, who are often seen as making a lot of noise, concurred with Youngkin’s light-hearted new approach as SCOTUS backed them with rulings expected to expand usage rights. guns and further restrict access to abortion. Even the NRA kept quiet, giving Youngkin a chance to maneuver.

Larry Sabato, founder and director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, warns: “Be careful, he has no record. “He shows a talent in the campaign at giving all the right signals to the right group without much commitment. He will do a tap dance, depending on the problem. It’s smart, but you don’t have to admire it or think it’s brave. It worked politically.”

Sabato added Vermont Governor Phil Scott to the group of Republican governors with high approval ratings. Scott at 69% with Democrats giving him 77%. Any of this rare group of governors could theoretically win the presidency, but no one could win the Republican nomination before Donald Trump.

This is the political tier Youngkin seems poised to enter, but his ambitions and our evolving politics may dictate a different path. Sabato announced: “He will run for higher office. “But how is he going to get the Republican nomination if he turns into another Charlie Baker, Larry Hogan, or Phil Scott? The answer is he doesn’t. “

Back in that day, Richard Nixon was the first to protest that if you were a Republican, you would run to the right in the primaries, and then back to center for the general position. It’s a move more difficult to make in today’s hyperpartisan politics. Perhaps it’s better to heed the advice of John Mitchell, Nixon’s attorney general, who told the press at the start of his not-so-well-ending presidency, “Look what we do, no what we say.”