After early success, Virginia conservatives have seen some of their highest priorities thwarted in the General Assembly.
Several marquee bills related to home-schooling and welfare, abortion and illegal immigration were killed or gutted in the past two weeks at the hands of four moderate Senate Republicans, including Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment Jr. (James City). Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) himself played a role.
The stunning defeats came in a year when Republicans took full control of Richmond, buoying conservatives whose agenda had died in a Democratic-led Senate. They pushed an ambitious legislative plan but ran into unexpected opposition from moderate members of their own party.
That has frustrated and even angered some conservative lawmakers and activists, the core of the Virginia Republican Party.
More than Southern civility was at stake. If conservatives pushed too hard too quickly, they could turn off swing voters in this year’s presidential and U.S. Senate races, political observers have said. Nor would it do much for McDonnell’s national political ambitions, because signing a host of divisive bills might make him a liability with moderate voters.
But with Republicans controlling every lever of power for the second time since the Civil War, some conservatives saw no reason to wait. The
Virginia Conservative Caucus rolled out an
80-bill agenda, twice the number of bills it sponsored last year.
They had some wins, even though some of the hot-button bills had not been the priorities of the governor or House and Senate leaders. They overturned a
19-year-old law limiting handgun purchases to one per month; passed a bill allowing faith-based adoption agencies to turn away, for religious reasons, gay applicants; and approved a $10 million-a-year tax credit for a private school vouchers for poor and middle-class students.
And then the conservative revolution seemed to hit a wall, as if Republicans belatedly decided to heed the governor’s call.
But some conservative activists see the defeats as nothing short of a betrayal. Some said they saw this coming, having vowed at the start of the session to keep an eye on suspected moderates. But others’ expectations for the session have been dashed.
“You had a lot of people that had their hopes up,” said Mark Kevin Lloyd, chairman of the Virginia Federation of Tea Party Patriots. “They thought by putting more conservatives in office, it would give the rest of them a spine. It hasn’t happened yet — to the satisfaction of many.”
