Fear And Loathing In The Virginia GOP: Loyalty Oath Required

We just love it. Having just gotten spanked in the recent Virginia general election, the state's Republicans have announced that they will require a "loyalty pledge" of all voters in their presidential primary election on February 12. See "Virginia GOP Gets Strict On Voting" in the Washington Post. [At right--Hitler's SS men take their loyalty oath.]

The people who run the Virginia GOP should hire a good, independent marketing consultant to help them understand how they are perceived by folks who aren't hardcore Republicans.

What they'd find is that part of the perception is that the party consists of overwhelmingly white, narrow-minded people who tend to be paranoid and exclusionist.

Nothing like a loyalty oath to boost that perception!

You won't see Democrats insisting on a loyalty pledge--i.e., a signed card stating that the voter will support the party's nominee in the general election, no matter who it is. Dems don't worry about these things.

Republicans, however, worry that independents, or mischievous Democrats, will bother to crash their party and create mayhem at the primary box--as if the GOP race isn't wild enough already. Why do they think this? Probably because it's the kind of thing they'd do to the Democrats (not your average Republican--just those consultants who sit around thinking up loyalty oaths--and dirty tricks).

If the Virginia GOP really worries about this it should either (a) support party registration, like many states have--although that would be pretty unpopular with most voters, or (b) hold caucuses, where they can control who attends (after all, that was their solution to assure that Gilmore would get the Senate nomination over Tom Davis).

From our vantage, however, we're happy to see the paranoia on display. Come to think of it, maybe we'll vote in the GOP primary after all--just to show how worthless those pledges are.