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enough, the voters of the Old Dominion, like so many docile sheep, would accept the GOP charge that the Democratic ticket was guilty of liberalism by association and should therefore be cast into outer darkness.
Somehow the Democrats never noted the fact that the GOP ticket was similarly connected, by way of party association, with Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew and an impressive roster of certifiable felons and other malfeasants who have not exactly ornamented Republican administrations over the last 15 years.
In any event, the Republicans should have learned, primarily from their Wilder experience, that liberalism has suffered a severe devaluation as a cry of political witchery in the state.
And because it has, the influence of the famed Independent Conservative Coalition, or “Main Street Money Boys,” has suffered an equally grievous blow.
One is always leery of writing a final obituary for the remnants of the old Byrd Organization. But the influence of former Gov. Mills E. Godwin Jr., Harry F. Byrd Jr., former Del. Roy Smith, Smith Ferebee and other veterans of the Byrd “massive resistance” days can only be considered moribund. Their inability to prevent a black from being elected lieutenant governor of Virginia is a bitter and ironic commentary on the sorry state into which the good old boy network has fallen.
This might be the most immediate legacy of the Wilder victory. Already the Republicans are said to be sharpening their longkfiives to rid the party of its ruling ./“Main Street” clique which they see as responsible for last week’s electoral disaster.
And for those of us who said — and said —and said — he couldn’t do it, Wilder’s victory has also taught us something very important.
It is the fact that eating lean and humble crow, complete with feathers, can be a vastly character building experience if done in the right spirit.
And it is in this spirit that this writer says, with feathers on his face', congratulations to Lt. Gov.elect Wilder as well as the rest of the Democratic team. You have made the pages of history turn.
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