I’ve been intrigued by Tom Perriello’s candidacy from the outset. As my former congressman in VA-05, it was clear that this was not your ordinary Democrat — one who was a bit more in the mold of RFK than the progressive scolds in Northern Virginia.
Of course, other candidates were quick to pile on. Corey Stewart welcomed Perriello to the race as a someone who would “be right at home with his fellow globalists Northam and Gillespie, who will sadly carry on the tradition of selling Virginia to the lowest bidder across the Pacific.”
A truly odd claim, given that not only did Prince William County go to great lengths to court Chinese investment, Stewart himself went on a seven-day junket to China back in 2012 to woo such globalist investment.
Yet today, Perrello struck back with anti-globalist sentiment that borders on the Sanders end of the specturm… and he did it in Danville, Virginia — not with a warning about the past, but a warning about the future and the advent of automation:
For sheer technical purposes, this is a good social media rollout. For positioning, it’s an excellent means of showing how Stewart probably isn’t going to measure up to this sort of candidacy from the Democrats in Virginia this year — and positions the others (Gillespie in front, Wagner a close second, Riggleman should he throw in) far better in terms of narrative.
Yet can Tom Perriello really separate himself from the progressive left? More to the point, is it something that his campaign staff, backers, and boosters will even allow him to do?
Here’s the thing: part of the Perriello charm is that he is a “pro-life Democrat” — someone who knocks off the hard edges of the wacky Democratic agenda and puts a human face on an otherwise faceless bureaucracy.
This year, the Republican Congress in Washington will more than likely defund Planned Parenthood, the nation’s #1 abortion chain soaking in $550 million taxpayer dollars to spend $38 billion last cycle alone — almost entirely against Republicans. Such a defunding will rattle the abortion industry right to its core… something that Catholics of every stripe, from Tim Kaine to Ken Cuccinelli, from Terry McAuliffe to Bob McDonnell, and yes — Tom Perriello and myself would welcome with open arms, if for no other reason than Planned Parenthood is diametrically opposed to everything we believe about the dignity of human life.
…or at least, practicing Catholics ought to cheer the abortion industry’s defunding and demise.
So here is the quick test for Perriello’s likelihood to survive. In effect, if the “social issues” are off the table — if marriage is settled, Planned Parenthood defunded, and the government isn’t used as a cudgel to put grown men in girls’ bathrooms — then will Perriello do the right thing (as a Catholic) and defund Planned Parenthood in Virginia?
UDPATE: …and just like that? Tom Perriello caved. From his Facebook profile, it is clear that Planned Parenthood exacted their pound of flesh:
This week’s assault on Planned Parenthood in Washington represents a vicious attack on women’s rights and women’s health.
I have always been pro-choice and a supporter of Roe v. Wade. I believe that women should have the constitutional right to make their own decisions in consultation with their family and physician and without meddling from politicians. I’m proud of the pro-choice votes I took in Congress, including against efforts to restrict funding to Planned Parenthood, and bar the District of Columbia from spending its own money for abortion services.
At the same time, I want to be very clear that I regret my vote on the Stupak-Pitts Amendment. At the time, I had extensive conversations with my constituents in Virginia’s Fifth and pledged at dozens of public meetings that I would support health care reform only if it was consistent with the Hyde Amendment. I believed at the time that voting for the Stupak amendment was the only way to meet that pledge.
After all, Perriello did help start Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, a group that was caught in the DNC Wikileaks scandal as helping to effect what John Podesta called a “Catholic Spring” — a reference to the Arab Spring that left the Middle East a wreck and kicked off the five-year long Syrian Civil War…
Of course, this shouldn’t shock me… but it does.
Thus the Democratic Party once again demonstrates a barbaric thirst to continue the tragedy of abortion for political gain.
UPDATE x2: …and to further this?
Gillespie? Pro-life.
Stewart? Pro-life.
Wagner? Pro-life.
Riggleman? Pro-life.
Say what you will about the dust up between the Republican contenders, but all of them — all of them — are pro-life.
UPDATE x3: You know, I’m not quite done yet on this whole anti-market protectionist racket that is supposed to save places like Danville and by extension, Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads when the robots come to do all the work.
To wit — what killed Danville wasn’t the free market. What killed Danville was a protectionist racket that shielded America from the free market, allowing us to create manufacturing bubbles that betrayed the hard working folks there with the illusion of wealth. It was the housing bubble before its time.
What made it worse? No one thought to invest in the opportunities to retrain and retool a workforce for a changing environment. Quick — what’s the closest four-year school to Danville, Virginia? Name the closest STEM academy? How much capital does the regioinal microfinance initiative have to invest in low-cost loans to local entrepreneurs to build local economies?
Milton Friedman was right. Bad markets aren’t replaced with good markets — they’re replaced with free markets.
Any other solution is downright Soviet, and though walls are somewhat in vogue nowadays, such solutions did not work out so well for them.