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By JOHN GOOLRICK
In politics perception is reality and by that standard Virginia Republicans suffered a crushing defeat on Election Day.
The take-no-prisoners, go-forbust strategy crafted by Governor George Allen and his advisers created such expectations of a dramatic GOP takeover of the state legislature a year after the Republican national revolution of 1994 that a net gain of two GOP legislators among the 140 is not viewed by the public as any kind of victory.
Had not Allen from the first moments of his highly partisan inaugural address declared all-out war on Democrats, and followed up with even stronger bomb tossing, this year’s election results might have been viewed as another step in the inevitable progression toward Republican control of the General Assembly.
The fact is the GOP now has as many Senate members as Democrats. The fact also is that many veteran Democrats both in the House and Senate won’t be able to run forever and most of them are in Republican
91.2%