Gilmore gets nod in Senate

By The News Virginian Staff

Published: October 26, 2008

Once the practice of statesmen, politics has evolved into an art of all things banal — schmoozing principal among them. On this count, as they have been in the polls since the race began, Senate candidates and former governors Mark Warner and Jim Gilmore are separated by a chasm. Warner represents a twist on the “Cheers” TV show theme – he knows everybody’s name. Gilmore is a politician with a comic’s capacity to offend, squashing toes in the natural manner in which most people breathe, many of the stinging digits found in his own party.

As a result, Warner, who made a mint in telecommunications, built a mammoth war chest while Gilmore scraped for relative pennies of support. Warner ascended in his party, winning a keynote speaking spot at the Democratic National Convention, while Gilmore fished for a base despite a relatively strong conservative record.

There are more than a few people for whom Gilmore cares little, and Warner hovers somewhere at the top of the list. Warner in 2002 followed Gilmore as governor and made quick work of depicting his predecessor as an irresponsible spender who left the budget in shambles. Gilmore touted a plan to eliminate the car tax, and wound up slashing it by 70 percent. But Warner charged Gilmore shortchanged the budget in the process, prompting a record $1.4 billion tax increase. It was later revealed that there was surplus that fiscal year and the state revenues were increasing before the tax increase.

Nevertheless, Gilmore’s campaign backside still wears the brand Warner applied, of a failed governor whose policies swamped the budget and forced his successor to stick it to Virginians. In fact, Gilmore’s spending record as governor bears a foul aroma. The state operating budget swelled by a third during his stay in Richmond. Republicans who cut taxes while failing to cut spending do taxpayers and conservatives a disservice.

Still, Warner masters another modern political art, that of unction. Not only did he slip responsibility for his tax increase by wrongly strapping it like a string of dynamite to Gilmore, he also eluded for years accountability for his 1994 rant against gun advocates, pro-lifers and homeschoolers. Gilmore achieved rare success when he released an audio recording of Warner’s comments that forced the Democrat to finally concede them as his own after repeated denials.

His strong Second Amendment record will allay potential Warner opponents among the ranks of the National Rifle Association, but there’s little to appease abortion foes and homeschoolers, except for the fact that a relative of Warner’s homeschools. What matters more is whether Warner can be taken at his word when he says, for example, that he opposes a provision in the Employee Freedom of Choice Act that would end secret ballots in union elections. As written, that law – the concept of which Warner favors – would load unions with power and threaten the stability of small businesses across the land.

Similarly, Warner touts as feasible the pipe dream popularly known among Democrats as the “renewable revolution,” a plan to shift America from reliance on fossil fuels to renewables. Never mind that renewables account for only 7 percent of the world’s energy output and that solar and wind power, to which he frequently refers, require vast expanses of land, in the fashion of ethanol, the fallacy of which leftists are discovering. Warner calls for an all-inclusive energy plan, including natural gas and nuclear energy, and insists that Gilmore is focused almost exclusively on drilling, a charge the Republican rejects.

Like presidential nominee John McCain but with a stronger conservative record, Gilmore is less than an ideal foe for Warner. But his deficiencies are dwarfed by Warner’s, no matter how carefully concealed the latter’s might be. As a result, Gilmore is our choice for the U.S. Senate.