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Much more so than the Republicans, the Virginia Democratic Party remains a curious amalgam of individuals and groups with agendas that are often poles apart. And yet Davis, Charles Robb and others convinced these various elements that the party tent was broad enough to hold all of them and that winning was a lot more fun and gave everyone much more power than losing.
So when the factions on the lfeft and right tacitly agreed to converge toward the moderate center as a matter of compromise, the party, which had seemed as shattered as Humpty Dumpty, put itself back together. The result is the Democratic lock on key statewide offices and significant General Assembly majorities.
That arrangement allows liberal and conservative Democrats in the legislature, with little in common except their party designation, to go at each other’s throats after they have worked in common cause to win elections.
Republicans like Vakos don’t think the GOP umbrella should be as all-encompassing as the Democratic umbrella, for fear it' might sacrifice principle to expediency.
But they do strongly advocate that all those who share the Republican belief in limited, government, free enterprise and fiscal integrity stop squabbling over arcane rules and intra-party control and concentrate their energies on Democrats.
Vakos and others contend the Democratic blend of oil and water is broad but basically shallow. It has resulted, they say, iri a cynical arrogance of power that puts party above principle and has resulted in a sharp divergence from Virginia’s traditional moorings of fiscal responsibility and limited government.
State spending in the 1980s, they argue, has far outpaced inflation, taxes have risen dramatically and
96.7%