Publications statewide condemn distracting and divisive GOP overreach
Just about a month into the 2012 session of the Virginia General Assembly, Republicans are proving what many Virginians suspected in the run up to the 2011 elections: Bob McDonnell and the Virginia GOP aren't nearly as interested in creating jobs, improving schools and fixing transportation as they are in cracking down on women's health care, voting rights and reasonable protections against gun trafficking.
Below are excerpts of reactions to the Republican approach to the 2012 session from publications across the Commonwealth.
Today, the News-Leader spoke out against Republican legislators attack on voting rights:
In an era when state legislatures everywhere should be taking look at new technologies and working to make the voting process easier, there are at least 17 bills flowing through the Virginia General Assembly that make voting more difficult.
Placing another roadblock to one of the basic building blocks of democracy is not helpful. Voting fraud has not been a problem in years. These bills are solutions looking for problems. The result would be the disenfranchisement of those less fortunate as to not have a driver's license or a form of ID.
It would be a much better use of the legislators' time to work on being progressive and innovative in thinking about how all registered voters can participate without going to the polls. New technology brings new opportunities. Surely, in the next decade there will be an app for voting available for whatever device we happen to be carrying around.
Bills like these pull us backward to a time when voting was a privilege for a select few. We need to be continuing toward the promise of a complete and equal democracy.
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The Daily Press urged legislators to focus on making people's lives better instead of the divisive and distracting agenda they've been pushing:
Memo to the Virginia General Assembly: Sometimes less is more. So how about focusing this session on the three critical issues that will determine Virginia's future, rather than divisive and sometimes senseless initiatives aimed at the hard-line fringe of your political base?
Instead of following Gov. Bob McDonnell's directive and focusing on the most pressing business of the people - fixing the woefully underfunded public retirement system, reforming education and shoring up our rickety bridges and overburdened roads - you continue to put forth bills targeted at limiting personal freedoms instead of addressing these critical needs.
Please stop this nonsense and use the wasted energy to work on solutions for problems that have been staring us in the face for years, but which successive legislatures have chosen to kick down the road for another day. That day is now.
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The Washington Post condemns the broad-based Republican attack on Virginians' voting rights by attempting to require photo identification that many people don't have as a condition for voting:
Mr. Cole says that his voting legislation would prevent voter fraud - specifically, ballots cast by impersonators. However, in an e-mail exchange with us on the subject, he did not respond when asked to name a single instance of such fraud in Virginia. Nor could he provide evidence when questioned directly by Democratic lawmakers in committee. In fact, he admitted, he knew of no instances.
.The percentage of voting-age citizens lacking IDs was significantly higher among African Americans (25 percent); among people aged 65 or older (18 percent); and among low-income Americans (15 percent).
So the effect of Mr. Cole's legislation would be to disenfranchise voters who helped Democrats, including President Obama, get elected in Virginia. If it survives a vote in the Senate, we hope it will be vetoed by Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R).
If it does become law, Virginia risks a challenge by the Justice Department, which may review any changes in the state's voting rules under the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Just over a year ago, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II said that Virginia, one of nine states covered by the law, had outgrown its history of institutional racism and should be released from Justice Department oversight. Legislation such as Mr. Cole's undermines that argument.
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The Staunton News-Leader raises a similar point about Republicans attempting to limit the right to vote in Virginia for no ostensible reason:
Virginia, along with many states in the South, has a disgusting history of doing everything it could to keep blacks from voting. Exhorbitant poll taxes imposed on people who could barely afford to buy food. Literacy and reading comprehension tests forced upon people who were barred from decent public schools.
That's the historical backdrop against which Republican legislators in the General Assembly are now rushing to enact their photo ID law.
And that's why we wish the Assembly majority would put the brakes on this rush to pass a law for which we've seen no evidence of any crime.
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The Virginian-Pilot took on the Republican war on women's health care rights, focusing on legislation that passed the Republican Senate, which would force a woman to have an intrusive and medically unnecessary ultrasound before an abortion:
The bill, among the most invasive ever passed in Virginia, is the result of frustration by lawmakers opposed to abortion. Unsuccessful in making abortion illegal and unwilling to be frank about their goals, they have tried by technicality and obfuscation to make it harder for a woman to terminate a pregnancy.
And now this. In addition to the ultrasound, the bill mandates a waiting period of at least 2 hours and as long as a day before a woman can have an abortion. That waiting period has no medical necessity at all.
A similar version of the Senate bill is pending in the House, and the governor has said he'll sign it.
This isn't about whether abortion is right or wrong.
This is about the scope of government. Even those opposed to abortion should have qualms about the government mandating medical procedures and waiting periods.
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The Richmond Times-Dispatch's Jeff Schapiro writes about the debates happening within the majority GOP not about how best to fix roads or improve schools, but about whether or not to outlaw abortion and maybe some forms of birth control by declaring that "personhood" begins at conception:
The personhood debate is largely raging out of view - in emails, telephone calls, one-on-one conversations in the corridors of the General Assembly Building - though it could flare in public, perhaps this week, when the Marshall and Stanley proposals might come up in committee.
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Finally, the Washington Post sought to remind Governor McDonnell of his responsibilities to the people of Virginia when it comes to issues like transportation, but so far he doesn't seem to have gotten the message:
The issue is shaping up as a test of loyalty, not just to the Republican Party but The governor's inability, or unwillingness, to deliver major, ongoing new funding for transportation, despite the extravagant promises he made as a candidate, is a major failure, one that is likely to haunt Virginia for years.
The failure is compounded given that Mr. McDonnell, a Republican, is the first governor in more than a decade to face a General Assembly wholly controlled by his own party. Virginians may conclude that the GOP cannot resolve what the governor himself has identified as a full-blown crisis that threatens Virginia's long-term economic health.
