By CHRISTOPHER MANION
In February 2019, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam was in trouble. In an interview with a popular Washington radio station, he had endorsed infanticide for children born after a failed abortion (we bear in mind that Northam was physician specializing in pediatric medicine before his election).
If that wasn’t bad enough, the same week it was discovered that Northam and a pal had posed for a picture in their med school yearbook — one in blackface, the other in full Ku Klux Klan regalia. At an informal gathering of conservative leaders the day the news broke, all but one thought that Northam would resign. He was a goner.
Well, they were wrong. For good reason.
In Virginia, the next in line of succession is the lieutenant governor, followed by the attorney general, followed by the speaker of the House of Delegates.
Suddenly Justin Fairfax, the lieutenant governor, was accused of a sexual assault and rape. Had he been a Trump judicial nominee, the Senate would have defeated him 100-0. Would he resign too?
No, not yet. Because next in line was Mark Herring, the attorney general. And he too had appeared in blackface!
Had these three officeholders been Republicans, they’d be history. According to their own political lexicon, Northam and Herring are racists, and Fairfax is a rapist. But the Media Political Industrial Complex has different standards of definition when it comes to pro-abortion Democrats. If these three had left office, it would have been a Republican trifecta, and Virginia House Speaker Marvin Cox would have been sworn in as governor. And that just couldn’t happen.
The Washington Post was strangely silent on Northam — after all, President Trump was colluding with Russia! The New York Times actually mocked the hypocrisy, writing the obituary of the triple scandal on April 2, 2019: “It Just Went ‘Poof’,” read the headline. “The calls for resignation have not been rescinded,” Delegate Jeff Bourne, a member of the legislative black caucus, said a few days before appearing with the governor at a bill-signing ceremony. “But I think it’s one of those things where we are operating in the current state of affairs. And the current state of affairs is that the governor and lieutenant governor are still there.”
In other words, “we’re all hypocrites — so what else is new?”
A High Price For A Bitter Pill
The usual suspects were strangely silent, but one should not conclude that Northam had “ridden out the storm.” Rather, we can be confident that he was told in no uncertain terms that, if he didn’t go full-bore radical, he’d be sitting by the side of the road by sundown. The passive voice in the last sentence is intentional. There is no single commander of the pro-abortion tyrannical left — not an earthly one, at least. But it is clear that Northam received an unwritten but clearly binding ultimatum and that he accepted it. Moreover, the proverbial Sword of Satan is hanging over his head: If he isn’t a “Good Doggy,” he is toast.
And he has been a stunningly obedient lapdog indeed. His lockdown is one of the most extreme in the country. And, in an eerie echo of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s disaster that killed thousands, Northam the physician apparently overlooked the critical hotspots where 62 percent of Virginia’s Wuhan Virus fatalities occurred.
The entire editorial page staff of The Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star bitterly attacked Northam for his malfeasance. “Last Friday [June 19], Gov. Ralph Northam announced that he was reversing his previous policy and belatedly releasing the names of nursing homes and assisted living facilities with COVID-19 outbreaks — which now account for nearly two-thirds of all coronavirus fatalities in the commonwealth.”
Early on, Northam had invoked patient privacy when refusing to indicate where patient deaths had occurred, “but as his sudden reversal last week made crystal clear,” the editorial continued, “the governor at best misled the public. If releasing the names of these facilities was not allowed under state law three months ago, releasing them now would still be forbidden since the General Assembly has not met in the interim to change the law, as House Minority Leader Todd Gilbert (R., Shenandoah) correctly pointed out.”
Northam is not accustomed to being attacked. After he was absolved of his racist past, untold (and unaudited) millions poured into Virginia’s off-year elections last fall and handed House and Senate majorities to the Democrats. Earlier this year they passed a massive leftist agenda that would make Liz Warren proud. And then came the virus, and Northam’s fear campaign promising to keep us safe by keeping us locked up.
But the Free Lance-Star had had enough, and they spoke for millions of Virginians. Gov. Cuomo had caused thousands of New Yorkers to die, and blamed Donald Trump. Not to be outdone, “Northam also bizarrely blamed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” the editors wrote, “for supposedly releasing faulty information that created ‘confusion’ to explain why for months, he would not let Virginians know which of these senior care facilities were reporting deadly coronavirus outbreaks. What exactly was Virginia’s physician/governor confused about?”
The editors echoed Republican House Leader Delegate Todd Gilbert’s charge: “Families have sought this information — information they could use to protect their loved ones from a lethal threat — for months.”
Behind The Flames
And Smoke — And Mirrors
Northam’s fate is more than merely local news. He is the model, and Virginia is the microcosm, for the left’s takeover of other red states, with Florida and Texas as their primary targets. The chaos, the riots, the fearmongering, the fake news, the endless attacks, are all players in an infernal cacophony designed to deliver a final blow to the republic. This is no longer a surmise, the battle lines have been drawn and the battle is raging before our eyes.
Beyond the battle lies an inflection point. Let’s use Northam’s favorite theme: “We’re all in this together,” he chants. In the meantime, he divides us further. He makes us afraid of each other — “you might make me sick!” He demands that we “maintain social distancing,” which is, of course, antisocial. He closes churches, intimidating even Virginia’s Catholic bishops. (One wonders: Attorneys general in other states have subpoenaed the personnel records from all Catholic chanceries in the state, permitting them to comb through years of extensive files looking for hidden crimes. Bishops Burbidge [Arlington] and Knestout [Richmond] have been silent in the face of Northam’s offensive against the faithful. Are they afraid that Attorney General Blackface Herring will pull the same stunt with them if they don’t behave?)
As revolutions proceed, the timetable shrinks — the first steps take decades, the next take years, and the final crescendo can take a matter of weeks. Our nation has to take Northam at his word and “come together” in peace — so we can separate in peace. If we cannot come to a sensible parting of the ways, what Dr. Angelo Codevilla has called our “Cold Civil War” will turn hot. Real hot.
“I just want black liberation and black sovereignty, by any means necessary,” Greater New York Black Lives Matter President Hawk Newsome tells Fox News. “If this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it.”
Curiously, a lot of Americans, including numerous Catholic bishops, say they support Black Lives Matter. Are they ready to give Mr. Newsome what he wants?
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