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Beginning of the end: Let the voting begin!

Photo by Joan Marcus.

We’re going to kick off this week’s column with an unusual bit of product placement. Although we rarely endorse anything outside of C-SPAN call-in shows, we would like to take this moment to declare the Broadway musical Hamilton the best piece of politically inspired stagecraft since Frost/Nixon, and the best musical about the Founding Fathers ever (sorry, 1776). Seriously, if you need a soundtrack for the current presidential election season (which kicked into high gear this week with the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses), beg, borrow or steal a copy of the Broadway cast recording, and set aside two hours to listen to it from beginning to end. If you reach the point where Thomas Jefferson saunters in and belts out the Rush-meets-Elvis number “What’d I Miss?” (he’s been in France, see) and still aren’t hooked, then I’m not sure we can still be friends.

Anyway, as we enter this year’s completely unpredictable primary season, Hamilton provides a great reminder that American politics has always been filled with strivers and miscreants, and that our current crop of candidates—as cartoonish as some of them may be—pales in comparison to the epic characters who helped found this great nation.

Which brings us, perforce, to the current GOP frontrunners, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. Now that Cruz has won the Iowa caucus vote, we can safely say the Republican Party establishment is screaming into its panic pillow. On the Democratic side, wild-maned Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders nearly pulled off an upset win against Hillary Clinton. But as we’ve said all along, the chances that Bernie will manage to engineer a repeat of Barack Obama’s winning 2008 primary campaign are infinitesimally small, and we fully expect him to be out of the race by May at the very latest.

Now all eyes turn to the New Hampshire primary, where Trump is favored to win (God help us all). The real battle on the Republican side will be for second place, which, at this writing, polls show as a four-way tie between Cruz, Rubio, Ohio Governor John Kasich and professional punch line Jeb Bush. With Rubio’s strong third-place finish in Iowa, he will probably nab second in New Hampshire (and perhaps even vault into the lead for the elephant’s South Carolina primary on February 20)—clearly the anti-Trump candidate. For the donkeys, there’s a good chance that Bernie could win this one. But as for his long-term chances, please see above.

And then (finally!) comes March 1, when 12 states (including Virginia) and American Samoa go to the polls to try to impose some order on this chaotic process. If Trump carries two of the first three GOP contests, this will be the final firewall to stop his momentum. In Virginia, expect polling place fireworks as Trump supporters find themselves confronted with the Republican Party of Virginia’s “loyalty pledge,” which will require them to either declare themselves a Republican or go home without voting. As for the Democrats, we are completely certain that Clinton will carry the day by a sizable margin.

But we were also certain that Trump would have been laughed out of the race by now, so what do we know?

Odd Dominion is an unabashedly liberal, twice-monthly op-ed column covering Virginia politics.

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The year in rear view: Our annual political quiz, odder than ever

With so much going on in the executive branch, it's easy to neglect what's happening in the General Assemblyl as the session hits its . midpoint. File photo.

Last year began, per usual, with politicians swarming the capitol for the kickoff of the General Assembly legislative session. Match each of the following attending personalities with a sordid detail from their past:

1) Former Governor Bob McDonnell

2) Current Governor Terry McAuliffe

3) Delegate Joe Morrissey

4) Senate Minority Leader Dick Saslaw

5) Senate Majority Leader Tommy Norment

a) Pleaded guilty to one count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

b) Lost more than $600,000 in campaign cash to an unscrupulous former treasurer.

c) Found guilty on multiple federal corruption charges, including failure to report a variety of gifts.

d) Unsuccessfully blackmailed by a former legal client over an extramarital affair he had with a lobbyist.

e) Once left his wife and newborn baby in the back of a limo while he attended a fundraiser.

6) During its winter session, the state Senate voted to ban which of the following?

a) All gifts from lobbyists with business before the Assembly.

b) The use of taxpayer money for conferences or meetings with agendas hidden from public view.

c) Semi-automatic assault weapons.

d) Pet monkeys.

7) In March, the Republican Party of Virginia (RPV) had to cancel a high- profile fundraiser when the featured speaker, South Carolina Representative Trey Gowdy, objected to the event’s name. What was it?

a) Playing the Trump Card

b) Reinforcing the Glass Ceiling

c) Beyond Benghazi

d) Operation Wetback

8) The current annual base pay for a member of Virginia’s House of Delegates is officially $17,640. According to a November 2014 accounting by the Daily Press (which factored in all reimbursements and perks but not election fundraising) what is the actual annual salary range?

a) $20,515 to $28,905

b) $32,453 to $41,787

c) $44,520 to $66,421

d) $72,110 to $125,550

9) In December, Attorney General Mark Herring caused a firestorm when he ruled the commonwealth would no longer recognize concealed-handgun permits from 25 states. How many existing Virginia laws did he nullify with this action?

a) 10

b) 7

c) 2

d) 0

10) The RPV recently proposed that voters in its open presidential primary sign a pledge that reads, “My signature below indicates that I am a Republican.” Which of the following reactions to this idea came from a Democrat?

a) “You’re gonna tell somebody who’s coming into the process that you can’t have a ballot? You’re gonna send them home? Are you insane?”

b) “That’s a real problem for a party that wants to be inclusive instead of exclusive. … We want to have as many people participate as possible, right?”

c) “The pledge—frankly—to me, it inhibits building a broader base for the party.”

d) “R.P. Virginia has lost statewide seven times in a row. Will now not allow desperately needed new voters. Suicidal mistake.”

e) None of the above

Odd Dominion is an unabashedly liberal, twice-monthly op-ed column covering Virginia politics.

Answers: 1-c, 2-e, 3-a, 4-d, 5-b, 6-d, 7-c, 8-c, 9-d, 10-e (source of quotes, in order: conservative radio host John Fredericks, Donald Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandow-ski, Prince William Delegate Bob Marshall, presidential candidate Donald Trump)

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Unsettled: Syrian refugees and the politics of fear

File photo.

You know, it takes a special kind of politician to unite elected officials from all points of the political spectrum. When was the last time you can remember a lone figure whose bold actions drew the same response from his own party and his opponents, from liberals and conservatives, and, indeed, from all right-thinking Americans?

Well, such a man is Roanoke Mayor David Bowers, a Democrat who achieved political infamy last week when he released a statement detailing his view that “it is presently imprudent to assist in the relocation of Syrian refugees to our part of Virginia,” and went on to favorably invoke President Roosevelt’s decision to “sequester Japanese foreign nationals after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.”

The reaction to this idiotic missive was swift and merciless, with Bowers’ fellow council members piling on as if it were a WWE free-for-all. They rushed to condemn the statement, calling it “juvenile,” “selfish” and “narcissistic,” while his own Vice Mayor David Trinkle offered a little armchair psychology, noting that Bowers was retiring from the mayorship, and that this was an attention-seeking “way to have another dance.” Bowers even got the two state parties to finally agree on something, with both state Democratic Party Chairwoman Susan Swecker and Republican Party of Virginia Chairman John Whitbeck publicly blasting the statement.

But the best response, bar none, came from Captain Hikaru Sulu himself, George Takei, who took to Facebook to excoriate Bowers, and to explain that the tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans who were interned during World War II (including himself) were “decent, honest, hard-working folks,” whose “lives were ruined, over nothing.”

What is truly sad is that Bowers wasn’t expressing an unpopular opinion, he just did it in such a ham-fisted way that even die-hard xenophobes were appalled. [Bowers apologized November 20.] But across the commonwealth, many politicians were voicing the exact same sentiment, just employing less incendiary language. Salem’s Republican Representative Morgan Griffith, for instance, said that it was “better to be safe than to be sorry,” and that “we should consider providing aid to help refugees elsewhere, without bringing them to American soil.”

Indeed, in the wake of the horrific terrorist attacks in Paris and Beirut, the idea of denying asylum to refugees from the Syrian war is widespread, and the issue has only increased the anti-immigration fervor being stoked by presidential aspirant (and Hair Club for Men poster boy) Donald Trump and his clown car full of Republican Party also-rans.

This sort of knee-jerk anti-refugee reaction is both heartless and absurd, as the very last way that a terrorist would try to make his way into the United States is through the State Department’s laborious, time-consuming refugee resettlement program. It is also, in our humble opinion, completely antithetical to Virginia’s long history of welcoming persecuted and displaced peoples from all over the globe. From the French Huguenots fleeing persecution in the 1700s to recent waves of refugees from Vietnam, Iran and South America, Virginia has provided safe haven, hospitality and opportunity to countless families fleeing the horrors of war.

We should not stop now, no matter what some callous, dimwitted, pandering politicians may think.

Odd Dominion is an unabashedly liberal, twice-monthly op-ed column covering Virginia politics.