AMAC Exclusive – By Scott Centorino
The political world has come to know NoVa—Northern Virginia—and its enormous sway in pulling Virginia leftward over the last two decades.
Move over, NoVa. Republican Glenn Youngkin has beaten Democrat Terry McAuliffe in a stunning upset and America needs another introduction.
Meet RoVa— what some call the “rest of Virginia.”
NoVa, of course gets all the attention. It’s the growing, bright blue mega-suburb of Washington that turned Virginia supporting George W. Bush by over 8 points to supporting Joe Biden by ten points.
An 18-point swing in 16 years. That’s NoVa’s growth and power in a nutshell.
But RoVa is where a majority of Virginians still live. And that’s who just elected Glenn Youngkin and sent a message to the world that radical leftists and their policies are political losers.
Youngkin won because he could compete in Virginia’s urban and suburban areas outside the Washington metro area, even winning some like his hometown of Virginia Beach and run up the numbers in rural Virginia like no Republican before.
For example, when Terry McAuliffe won his first term as Governor in 2013, McAuliffe won over 40 percent of the vote in rural counties across the state like King and Queen, Lunenburg, Mecklenburg, Nottoway, and Southampton.
As of this writing, it appears that McAuliffe didn’t even break percent in those counties.
RoVa took a stand, not just for the Rest of Virginia but for the Rest of America.
For the last several years, Virginia Democrats have pushed the limits of leftist policies—an abortion bill which essentially legalized infanticide, a relaxed approach to releasing violent convicted felons and granting them voting rights, and allowing public employees to collectively bargain against taxpayers.
But above all else, Virginia’s election centered around schools—specifically critical race theory, parental involvement, and mask mandates. Of course, it’s no coincidence that schools are where progressive activists, in concert with teacher’s unions, have had the most unchecked power in driving a radical leftist agenda.
Leftism isn’t over. But RoVa just taught its practitioners a valuable lesson on behalf of the Rest of America: we’re watching. Radicalism, even if it’s cloaked in bureaucratic legalese and the jargon of human resources-speak, is radicalism.
And the vast majority of Americans aren’t buying it.
We remember when prominent Democrats supported welfare reform instead of Medicaid-for-all. We remember when even Barack Obama understood that a national debt of $8.6 trillion shifted “the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren.”
The debt today? Almost $29 trillion.
But it’s the left’s cultural imperialism, not its financial lunacy, that’s driving the Rest of America crazy.
We remember when basic patriotism was bipartisan.
To see how far the far left has gone, just look at the crest of their last, big cultural wave—the counter-cultural movement of the 1960s.
Sure, there were a few North Vietnamese flags flown and the early accusations of what would come to be known as “systemic racism.”
But underlying the vast majority of even the radical left of the 1960s was a love of America.
The Port Huron Statement, the 1962 manifesto of student activists, argued that “freedoms of speech, assembly, thought, religion, and press should be seen as guarantees, not threats, to national security.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. framed his rhetoric as positions of faith and patriotism more than any leader of any political persuasion in American history.
Know what the very last song played at Woodstock in 1969 was—the song that wrapped up three days of countercultural excess?
Jimi Hendrix played the Star-Spangled Banner. You read that right.
That’s not the left today. Now, NPR only broadcasts the Declaration of Independence after offering a disclaimer.
In Virginia, Glenn Youngkin’s campaign became a symbol of opposition to the left’s cultural radicalism. RoVa was watching and took a stand.
Now, it’s the Rest of America’s turn.