Wow. The Richmond Times-Dispatch editorial board is not pulling punches here. Their latest editorial savages the campaign of gubernatorial candidate Ralph Northam for their recent mailer. Why?
Take a look:
(via @PatrickRuffini)
I mean holy cow. They are basically accusing Gillespie’s campaign of representing hate groups. Here is what the Dispatch has to say:
hey have distributed a mailer of their own, seeking to tie Republican gubernatorial nominee Ed Gillespie to the white nationalists who rampaged through Charlottesville in August.
That isn’t merely a reach. It’s practically libel.
Gillespie has repeatedly and passionately condemned white supremacists and other creatures that have crawled out from under the alt-right rock. Linking him to them requires the following absurd logic: (1) Donald Trump said some stupid things about Charlottesville. (2) Trump is a Republican. (3) Gillespie is a Republican. (4) Therefore, Gillespie supports racial hate.
It seems the Gillespie campaign doesn’t have totally clean hands either, though their sin is orders of magnitude lesser.
In point of fact, the Gillespie campaign has made a similar argument by trying to link Northam and the violent MS-13 gang. Parliamentary contrivance forced Northam to cast a tie-breaking vote on a bill to ban sanctuary cities in Virginia. He voted against it. Through the magic of political transubstantiation, the Gillespie campaign turned this into support for both illegal immigration and violent street gangs that want to “Kill. Rape. Control.”
That is hardly the same thing, considering Northam did cast that vote. But sure, it’s sort of the ballpark. So things are going great in Virginia, basically.
It wasn’t just the Dispatch blasting the dems inflammatory mailer, though. This is from the Roanoke Times.
In the aftermath of Charlottesville, almost every Virginia politician of note — Republican Senate hopeful Corey Stewart excepted — said exactly what you would think they’d say: White supremacy is an evil that must be condemned in the harshest terms.
Gillespie’s strongly-worded response stands in marked contrast to that of President Trump, who dithered for three days before he could manage to read those words — and then later backtracked to blame “both sides.” When a Republican president finds it difficult to call Nazis marching in the street a bad thing, that would seem to hurt all Republicans everywhere. Gillespie hasn’t called out Trump — as Democrats want him to do — but he has certainly condemned the marchers at every opportunity. In one statement, Gillespie called them “a torch-carrying, shield-bearing white supremacist and neo-Nazi mob” that “essentially invaded Virginia.”
Gillespie — indeed, all Republicans — are in a bind as far as Trump is concerned, but otherwise Gillespie himself has said and done exactly the right things here. Vote against Gillespie because of his views on tax policy, if you want, but don’t vote against him because of anything related to Charlottesville. He and Northam are on the same side here.
So if you are keeping track, this is the mainstream media in VIRGINIA calling out Democrats over a false accusation of RACISM.
Now that is something you don’t see every day, folks.
(h/t Matt Vespa, Townhall)