OPINION:
The editorial staff of The Washington Post called on Virginia’s Ralph Northam to resign from his governor’s seat.
Think on that for a moment: The left-leaning editorial board of The Post called on the left-leaning guy they once endorsed to step aside.
Duck.
There are flying pigs about.
“GOV. RALPH NORTHAM (D) can no longer effectively serve the people of Virginia who elected him,” the editorial board wrote. “His shifting and credulity-shredding explanations for the racist photograph on his medical school yearbook page, and the silence into which he then succumbed for days — after initially promising to do ’the hard work’ of atonement and apology to restore his standing with Virginians — is simply too much.”
The Post’s board also took umbrage with the nickname bestowed on Northam during his medical college days — “Coonman.”
Bluntly, the board said Northam’s “time is up,” and “he must go.”
This — despite just a little over a year ago, The Post had this to say about Northam, in an October 2017 endorsement for the governor’s office: “[He] can convincingly promise to be the governor for all Virginians.”
Northam has been facing a long line of criticisms from his own Democratic Party, all aimed at getting him to leave office.
And if he does leave, the governor’s mansion could trip into conservative hands — specifically, to the House of Delegates’ speaker, Kirk Cox.
“If Virginia’s top 3 Democrats fall to blackface and sexual assault scandals,” USA Today blared in a headline, “the next governor could be a Republican.”
Northam is hanging on by a thin thread, to put it mildly.
But The Post is right: Northam has become not just an ineffective leader, but also a pariah. And for that reason, he must go.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
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