IN VIRGINIA IT’S ALREADY BEGUN
The Virginia Legacy
Posted 01/19/2010 07:27 PM ET
McDonnell takes up the gauntlet. AP View Enlarged Image
Politics: As attention fixed on Massachusetts’ election, the counterrevolution against Obama’s Washington had already begun in Virginia, where Gov. Bob McDonnell pledged himself to pushing back federal power.
Like this week’s senatorial contest in the Commonwealth, last November’s gubernatorial election in the Old Dominion was seen as a referendum on Obama’s megalomania. A former state attorney general, McDonnell waged a flawlessly positive campaign against lackluster legislator Creigh Deeds.
Democrats blamed McDonnell’s win on Deeds’ performance-challenged campaign — just as they pointed fingers in New Jersey at incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine for his loss to Chris Christie. But more astute observers registered seismic electoral activity up and down the Eastern Seaboard that shook Obama’s far-left agenda.
Last Saturday McDonnell mounted the steps of the state capitol — designed, he reminded Virginians, by Gov. Thomas Jefferson; cornerstone laid by Gov. Patrick Henry — and called for a new “Commonwealth of Opportunity.” He traced the state’s resistance to tyranny to Capt. John Smith’s landing in 1607.
For a Virginia governor’s inauguration, such references could be dismissed as boilerplate. But McDonnell signaled an intent to revive the 10th Amendment (added to the Constitution by Virginians James Madison and George Mason), which reserves to the states all powers not explicitly granted to the federal government.
“The Founders’ capstone on the Constitution is the Bill of Rights,” McDonnell declared. “No federal mandate nor program crafted by either political party should undermine the central principle of federalism, enshrined in the birth certificate of America by those who pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor.”
As the party of Lincoln takes charge in the new governor’s state, McDonnell’s leadership circle crafts its challenges to the centralizing ambitions of the Democrats. Among the first ideas under consideration: making it illegal to mandate the purchase of health insurance, a body slam at ObamaCare.
Another measure, reports the Washington Post, “would declare that the federal government has no right to regulate as interstate commerce any good or service produced or performed entirely within Virginia.” A third would subject guns to the same terms.
Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Harrison, Tyler, Taylor, Wilson and … McDonnell? It’s getting interesting in “the birthplace of presidents.”
© 2010 Investor’s Business Daily, Inc. All rights reserved. Investor’s Business Daily, IBD and CAN SLIM and their corresponding logos are registered trademarks of Data Analysis Inc. Copyright and Trademark Notice | Privacy Statement Terms | Conditions of Use
Comments are closed.
