By Jeffrey A. Rendall
Virginia’s Spanberger is the political embodiment of the ‘moderate’ Democrat sham
I’ve got to admit I was a bit surprised by local Virginia Democrats’ “sorry, not sorry” arrogant attitude towards the swiftness at which newly-inaugurated Governor Abigail Spanberger moved (through the new Democrat-dominated legislature) to boost taxes and also hitch the commonwealth’s wagon to greenie climate change measures that won’t improve the environment at all but will most certainly task people in the lower income strata to pay for their largesse.
President Donald Trump touts his all-of-the-above energy agenda to help citizens afford everyday living; Democrats, like Spanberger, in turn propose phantom climate nothing-burgers and incremental rate hikes to increase cost-of-living.
So much for affordability. But did Virginians actually beg for this when they fell hard for Democrats’ pitch in last year’s election here? In a solidly argued column titled “The Abigail Spanberger Bait-and-Switch”, David Catron wrote at The American Spectator last week:
“’Virginia Democrats are also looking at proposing a 4.3% tax on rideshare trips and an additional 1.9% tax on top of that for trips in Northern Virginia.’ One would expect that a governor who ran on ‘affordability’ would veto almost all of this proposed theft — and that’s what it is — but Spanberger will sign any tax bill that her Democrat-dominated legislature slaps on her desk. Why? She believes this money can be more efficiently spent by the state than by the people who earned it. Yet there is no small amount of poetic justice in all of this nonsense. Spanberger and her co-conspirators in the General Assembly were elected by the bureaucrats who colonized Northern Virginia. Now they pay — albeit with your tax money.
“This is something to remember as the 2026 midterms approach. Every Democrat who utters the word ‘affordability’ must be regarded as a con artist. Any Democrat described by the corporate media as a moderate will pick your pocket without hesitation. There is no such thing as a moderate Democrat. Abigail Spanberger is not an outlier. She is all too typical of the party to which she belongs. They are all left-wing extremists and determined to ‘fundamentally transform’ the U.S. into a dystopian hellhole if they are returned to power.”
Too true. Every Republican everywhere should etch Catron’s words into their campaign headquarters’ walls, because this is reality in the Democrat party, down to the last elected Democrat candidate and officeholder.
As I’ve argued before, voters don’t actually need to study a Democrat candidate’s platform, because the space between all Democrats’ ears is occupied by the same tax and amnesty-loving grey matter gobbledygook as Spanberger’s. Toss in “woke” and DEI/transgender mindsets and you’ve got your average liberal pol summed up in a nutshell.
Senator John Fetterman may be a rare exception. But the thought holds for the rest of ‘em.
Though Spanberger is but the tip of the proverbial iceberg as to why/how she managed to get her liar’s lips ushered into office in the past few months.
Virginia voters didn’t necessarily opt for the blonde white lady Democrat because of her platform or ideology or record or reasons for being. At least I don’t believe they did. Virginians didn’t think about much of anything last November when flooding the polls with Democrat-intent participants itching to do something other than twiddle their thumbs waiting to send a message to President Trump and the Republicans in Congress.
As I pointed out at the time, last fall’s record-length government shutdown was particularly relevant in Virginia because so many federal employees subsist here, particularly in the northern part of the commonwealth. I’ve lived in Virginia for over three decades now and most of those years were spent attempting to navigate the hyper-crowded metamorphosis that Northern Virginia was undergoing. Urban sprawl is too kind a term to describe it.
I still recall the first time I arrived in Virginia in 1995, intent on relocating there from southern California, which I had lived my entire life up to that point. I was conditioned to clogged freeways and communities stretching mile upon mile, so Virginia didn’t seem all that strange to me. Upon entering the DC metro region from the west, on I-66, I mistakenly exited on the newly opened Fairfax County Parkway… going south.
I located a way to turn around and headed north, close to where our hotel was reportedly located (this was in the days before GPS). I noted the newness of the Fairfax Parkway and wondered why the Virginians would build such a major road so far from Washington, DC itself. I had previously spent some time at the closer-in Falls Church, located near a Metro station, but this new four-lane highway was miles further out from the nearest train stop.
Why would they expand out here? I wondered. I didn’t figure the Fairfax Parkway was a commuter artery back then. Man, was I naïve.
Today, the Washington DC metro area extends way beyond the Fairfax Parkway and people live and commute into Washington from places we national capital neophytes back then couldn’t have dreamed of. Desperate souls commute to DC from Pennsylvania and West Virginia now. That’s no joke. Yet it’s the people who moved into those since-established communities along I-66 and other places that supply the anecdotal physical evidence of massive government growth in the region.
Some of the wealthiest counties in the United States ring Washington DC. My old Manassas neighborhood was populated with mostly federal and local government employees. We lived in the smallest house in the development. The government workers could afford the “mansions”.
And the region hasn’t changed a bit, in terms of the types of people who live there. Lots and lots and lots of government employees. Nowadays, Northern Virginia’s sprawl is fueled by Data Centers as well, since it has become the unofficial Data Center capital of the United States. They’re all crowding into the last available bits of land in what used to be dotted open space. Decades ago, Dulles Airport was “way out there”. Not anymore.
The lesson? Heavily Democrat-backing northern Virginia chose Abigail Spanberger by significant percentages. If there’s no such animal as a “moderate” Democrat any longer, there’s no such thing as a Republican-leaning community in northern Virginia in existence, either. The government shutdown meant there were thousands upon thousands of idle people in the area just stewing in their disdain for Donald Trump and the Republicans.
Was the government shutdown caused by the Republicans? Heck no. The GOPers in Congress passed a continuing resolution that would’ve funded government services and activities, but Democrats recognized a political opportunity – one blabbermouth Democrat even admitted it was “leverage” – and took advantage of it. Exploited it. Well done, Democrats! They figured issue-ignorant people wouldn’t blame them for the impasse, and they were right. And besides, Democrats had the “affordability” myth to push them over the top.
Spanberger was the recipient of the national Democrats’ government shutdown-inspired fortune and was aided immensely in convincing the gullible and unenlightened that Trump and all Republicans were to blame for prices remaining so high, as though Trump’s campaign promises were shuttered in the year since he’d won back the presidency from senile Joe Biden and cackling Kamala Harris.
Spanberger’s Republican opponent last November, then-Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears, implored locals to oppose Spanberger’s all-too-predictable move to the left ahead of time, but the headwinds were too strong for any Republicans to confront. There was way too many angry revenge-seeking Democrats to counteract principle and good governance that Sears represented.
If a “knee equals two feet” in football parlance, an incensed Democrat voter base propelled by propaganda equaled ten points at the ballot box in blue/purple-ish states like Virginia.
Now we’re stuck with Spanberger, and she just assumed office a couple weeks ago.
If Facebook is any indication, there’ve been a plethora of fawning posts crowing about Spanberger being the first woman to occupy the governor’s chair in the commonwealth that served as the birthplace of American liberty two-hundred-and-fifty years ago.
I can’t say for sure, but since Democrats have no issue ideas of their own – other than raising taxes and devoting the extra loot to goodies for their constituencies and illegal aliens – it seems logical that they awake every morning wondering how they might reverse years of good governance with illusions and magic tricks… and still remain popular.
The establishment media helps Democrats every time, by advancing their spin-masters’ “moderate” trickery con. If Republicans know it’s coming, they’d best be prepared to meet and defeat the notion well ahead of this year’s campaigns.
If it’s worked right, Virginia can become the cautionary tale example of what happens when phony “moderate” Democrats gain office through deceits and distortions in a campaign. Virginians are paying the price; no reason the rest of the country must follow suit in 2026.
Jeff Rendall is editor and publisher of GolfintheUSA.com and has written about golf and politics for over a quarter of a century. A non-practicing attorney from California, he moved to the east coast three decades ago to pursue and combine his interests in all things American history and culture. Jeff has worked as an intern on Capitol Hill and in various capacities in grassroots organizing and conservative organizations and publications, including a nearly two-decade stint at ConservativeHQ.com. Column republishing or other inquiries: Rendall@msn.com .