From the Martinsburg Journal:
MARTINSBURG - Dr. Joseph DeSoto has a vision for West Virginia, one that he believes is already on its way to becoming a reality.
In the not too distant future, Republicans will hold all of the major offices, including governor, senators and house members. And it makes sense because many West Virginians are already philosophically in tune with the Republican platform, said DeSoto, who currently serves as president of the Berkeley County Republican Club and chairman of the Eastern Panhandle Republican Association.
"While most West Virginians are still registered as Democrats, they are the 1940s Democrats and they are actually de facto Republicans when you consider their beliefs. And that's why, in time, the Republican party is going to make this state completely red," he said.
Reality:
Democrats remain the dominant voting force in West Virginia, adding 26,416 to their ranks since the 2006 general election to total 675,305. Republicans gained 10,467 voters during that time, and now number 353,437.
The GOP outnumbers Democrats in eight of the state's 55 counties, down one from the primary. Berkeley County had 297 more Republicans than Democrats in May, but the latter party has since eclipsed them by 257 voters.
Not only are Democrats dominant from our traditional Democratic roots by a 2-to-1 margin, we're outregistering the GOP with new Democrats at 2.5-to-1 pace.
Under DeSoto's "leadership," Berkeley County just flipped from Republican majority to Democrats outnumbering them. His smears about Sen. Barack Obama and others were probably beneficial to Democrats by helping moderate-thinking, unregistered voters and independents who switched to the Democratic decide that they did not want to be part of the Hate Talk Express of the modern GOP.
While DeSoto's is having a "vision," Berkeley County Democrats have worked at actual party building and helping people.
He sees West Virginia as all "red" in the future - really? If the Republicans believe the FDR-era Democrats are really Republicans, how's come they haven't been able to convince them of that? It's not like they haven't had a few decades to convince them since the 1940s to switch parties. It's because the Democratic Party is really the Big Tent, where people of different ideological stripes can work together on solutions for the common good while the Republican Party has grown even more narrow and narrow in ideology to the point where long-term conservatives like Christopher Buckley, Susan Eisenhower, the granddaughter of Dwight Eisenhower and cut from the same political cloth as him, andJulie Nixon Eisenhower, the daughter of Richard Nixon, have endorsed Barack Obama for president.
And probably the best known West Virginia Republican in the blogosphere, John Cole of Balloon Juice, left the Republican Party and switched his registration to the Democratic Party. Like many of us, he has criticisms of the Democrats and some of our candidates. But the differences many have with our party and our leaders are often miniscule in comparison to our differences with the state and national GOP.
Meanwhile the WV GOP couldn't even field legitimate candidates or any candidate to run for governor, U.S. Senate, two of the three Congressional races, Secretary of State, Auditor and Treasurer. Looking at the GOP bench, I don't see many people rising in the future. Vic Sprouse was touted as a "family values" Republican with a future in the state until his numerous affairs and public feud with one of his many ex-wives over support for the health bills for one of his children ended that.
State GOP Chairman Doug McKinney said this was going to be the election the party focused on "Unleashing Capitalism" because the state has too many environmental and safety regulations. The GOP's standard bearer on a Quixotic quest for the governor's race called West Virginia the most "socialist state" in the nation. The reality is West Virginia's economy is growing at a faster rate than the nation's economy and the man Weeks and McKinney supported for president in the past eight years just nationalized banks and a large part of the insurance industry. In those two cases again, Republicans were in opposition to reality.
Considering how much damage the Republican Party has done to our nation's economy, environmental and safety regulations, military strength and international reputation over the past eight years, you can see why DeSoto and his ilk want to focus on a delusional "vision" than on reality.
But all we need to know about DeSoto and his "vision" is that he told people to vote for George W. Bush for president. How'd that work out for us? |
