From over the transom
The following is an excerpt from Gary Bauer’s Campaign for Working Families newsletter. We have emphasized in bold a point he makes that Party leadership at every level needs to internalize.
Virginia Is For Lawlessness?
Decades ago, Virginia tourism officials adopted the slogan, “Virginia is for lovers.” With the election of Clinton hack Terry McAuliffe as governor and Mark Herring as attorney general, Democrats seem determined to change the slogan to “Virginia is for lawlessness.”
Earlier this week we warned that Attorney General Herring had suggested that he might not defend the popularly enacted state marriage protection amendment. During an interview on National Public Radio this morning, Herring announced his decision:
• “As attorney general I cannot and will not defend laws that violate Virginians’ rights. That’s what I have pledged over and over to do, is to put the law and put Virginians first. … It’s about what the law requires here, and we have concluded, I have concluded, that the law here is unconstitutional, and I think the Supreme Court … would find the law unconstitutional.”
Incredible. Outrageous. Lawless.
There is no “right” to same-sex marriage anywhere in the laws of Virginia.
Herring is not putting the law or Virginians first. The people of Virginia overwhelmingly voted for the state’s marriage amendment. Herring, on the other hand, won his race by just 900 votes out of more than two million cast. Herring is putting his radical left-wing agenda first.
It is not up to Herring to unilaterally decide whether the law is unconstitutional or not. When he was sworn in as attorney general, not as a judge, he took an oath to “support the constitution of the commonwealth of Virginia.” Instead, he is ignoring that constitution just as Obama ignores the U.S. Constitution.
Some conservatives and some Christians have argued that our position on same-sex marriage should be a federalist position — let the people of every state decide. But just as it did with abortion, the left will not permit that.
The radical left is intent on taking the “anything goes” ideology that prevails in New York and San Francisco and ramming it down the throat of Middle America. It is using the courts to make law and invalidate the will of the people. The left will force same-sex marriage on every state in the union.
The Virginia General Assembly can trace its roots back to the earliest legislative body in America. The House of Burgesses was in operation in 1619. It hosted leaders, who resisted the lawless tyranny of their day, such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Patrick Henry.
But today, Virginia’s governor has demanded that Obamacare be expanded or he’ll do it by executive decree. Now Virginia’s attorney general has decreed that he doesn’t care what the law says or what 57% of voters want. Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Henry must be rolling over in their graves.
Republicans, who control the Virginia House of Delegates, and those in the divided state Senate, must respond. I hope they will be more effective in countering the arrogant lawlessness of a newly-elected governor and attorney general than Republican leaders in Congress have been in confronting Barack Obama.
One last note to GOP leaders at every level, to Karl Rove and the big donors: Do you understand why massive numbers of people who vote Republican are frustrated and furious? They want to see their representatives fight back! You cannot downplay the lawlessness of the administration, hoping that just by being polite you might win the next election — and then you will do something.
I understand that winning is essential. But to win we must have leaders who will fight for our values just as aggressively as Obama and McAuliffe and Herring are fighting for theirs.
