In the badly broken U.S. political media, despite massive evidence to the contrary (including the nightmarish 4+ years of Trump and Trumpism, not to mention the extremist “Tea Party” before that), they *still* love to pretend that there are “moderate” Republicans left in that party. Except that…there really aren’t, at this point, with a few rare exceptions. You’ll hear that same type of language here in Virginia to describe Republicans like former VA State Senator Glen Sturtevant (R), who lost his reelection bid in 2019 to Democrat Ghazala Hashmi by a 54%-46% margin in the former SD10.
Now, Sturtevant is running to get back into the State Senate, this time in the Chesterfield-based SD12, a solidly “red” district which was won by Glenn Youngkin in November 2021 by 14 points (57%-43%). Sturtevant is taking on far-right/insurrectionist incumbent Sen. Amanda Chase, as well as Tina Ramirez, for the Republican nomination in 2023, and Chase is already busy attacking him as supposedly having “voted to elevate sexual orientation and gender identity to a special protected status for state employment,” and even supposedly “voted for legislation that would allow Drag Queens to be hired as teachers in our public schools,” plus “sponsored, voted in favor of, and was instrumental in passing the “so-called” Equal Rights Amendment…[that] threatens to enshrine abortion and gender fluidity into our Constitution and erase important distinctions between men and women concerning privacy, sports, and other areas.” Crazy stuff.
So how is Sturtevant responding to this attempt by Chase to paint him as not really a hardline, rock-ribbed right winger, but some sort of “moderate” or even WORSE? LOL Is Sturtevant emphasizing that he actually IS a reasonable, sane, “moderate” Republican, while stressing that Chase is an embarrassment, an extremist, etc? Well, at least this morning on right-wing/Trumpist radio (WRVA), that’s not at all what Sturtevant was doing. Check out the following audio clip from Sturtevant’s appearance, in which he frankly sounds like just as much of a raving, right-wing extremist nutjob as Chase. According to Sturtevant (and needless to say, ALL of this is wildly false, crazy, etc.):
“You see what’s going on, not just in Virginia but all around the country, with the pushing of the ‘woke’ agenda and Critical Race Theory…we are at this precipice now, where the left is working to indoctrinate our kids. They have oftentimes focused on other areas of culture, but the social chaos we are living through right now is directly focused on our kids. And we’ve got to fix it. We’ve got to fix it. The transgenderism, the ‘woke’ ideology that’s being pushed in our schools – boys using girl’s bathrooms, boys playing girl’s sports…curriculum. It’s extraordinarily alarming. The sexualizing of our kids; it’s got to stop. And thank god we have Gov. Youngkin there, and they’re working to root out and change a lot of these things. But…we had 8 years of Northam and McAuliffe, who basically opened wide the doors that if you want to come and teach kids leftist ideology, Critical Race Theory, these ‘woke’ concepts, Virginia’s doors were wide open to them. And we have got to undo that. And that I think means, if you’re not going to teach kids to be patriotic, to love their country and their Commonwealth, you’re only going to teach the reading, writing, mathematics, science, English, etc. and have high standards, and you’ve got to keep out the politics, then we can’t have you teaching in our schools – period. And I think that’s going to be the next phase of this.”
WTF?!?!?!? Again – and it really shouldn’t even have to be said! – all of this is wildly false, crazy, extreme, etc. Also, again, Sturtevant has generally been considered to be a “moderate” Republican. So either he never really was a “moderate,” or he really changed the past few years, or he’s simply willing to say ANYTHING to win the Republican nomination next year. Or all of the above? Regardless, Sturtevant is symptomatic of how far right the Republican Party has lurched in the past few years, into truly bizarre, tinfoil-hat/John Birch Society territory. Scary times…
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