THE ANTI-TAX crowd has trained the full force of its wrath on Republican lawmakers in Virginia who defied their party leadership to back an increase in state taxes last year. Instantly branded as infidels, the Republican defectors have been treated to venomous denunciations and scarcely veiled threats that primary challengers would be found to unseat those who broke faith with the conservative orthodoxy. Anti-tax champion Grover Norquist's group, Americans for Tax Reform, has been circulating a poster headlined "Virginia's Least Wanted" that bears the names and photos of the GOP turncoats. And a conservative political action committee has raised tens of thousands of dollars to finance anti-tax candidates.But with Virginia's primaries less than two weeks off...the campaign of intimidation has largely evaporated...barring a major upset, nearly all the Republican tax-backers appear to be headed for renomination and probably reelection too -- threats or no threats.
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Eager to avoid an intraparty brawl in an election year, former attorney general Jerry W. Kilgore, the likely Republican gubernatorial nominee, endorsed all the party defectors and gave Mr. Norquist the cold shoulder; so did other key Republican officeholders.
More broadly, there is no sign that Mr. Warner's $1.4 billion tax increase triggered anything resembling a citizens' revolt in Virginia, despite lawmakers' anxieties at the time and the anti-tax crowd's huffing and puffing. The bulk of that money is going to improving the state's education system, which needs it. And while the state is enjoying a strong economy and a budget surplus, it faces soaring health care costs and staggering transportation needs that no one has figured out yet how to pay for. By turning their back on the anti-tax movement's cries for revenge, Virginians would be displaying sound judgment.
The key points here, all bad news for the Republicans, are: a) there is no significant anti-tax groundswell this year in Virginia; b) people are satisfied with the direction Virginia is heading under the leadership of Mark Warner and Tim Kaine; and c) the power of right-wing extremists like Grover "drown government in a bathtub" Norquist appears to have declined significantly among the public at large, as reflected in dismal poll results for the Tom DeLay/Bill Frist "nuclear" Congress and for President George "my way or the highway" Bush.
Here in Virginia, we have a simple choice this election year: go back 8 years to the Jim Gilmore days of fiscal chaos and irresponsibility, or carry on the past 4 years of AAA bond ratings and "best managed state in the country" awards under Warner/Kaine. Not a tough choice at all, unless of course you enjoy watching Virginia go down the tubes. Right, I didn't think so.