OPINION:
A recent Washington Post front-page article headlined “Youngkin puts guns, abortion on hold” read like a mischievous attempt at “Let’s you and him fight” triangulation, meant to pit various factions of the Republican base against one another.
The headline on the online version was even more provocative in that regard: “Youngkin tests activists’ patience as he pushes abortion and guns aside.”
That would be Glenn Youngkin, Virginia’s Republican governor-elect, who will have four years to carry out the conservative agenda he campaigned and won on with the support of pro-life and gun rights activists, among others.
Not all of that agenda needs to be rolled out en masse on Jan. 15, the day he takes office, and most Virginia Republicans understand that even if The Washington Post hopes they don’t. Put another way: You drink from a faucet, not a fire hose.
While understandably eager to roll back much of Virginia Democrats’ liberal pro-abortion and gun-control laws, most pro-life and gun-rights activists accept that Mr. Youngkin needs to set priorities to hit the ground running.
That means Mr. Youngkin is expected to focus initially on reforming education (especially eradicating critical race theory and gender identity indoctrination from school curriculums), funding law enforcement and cutting taxes, three policy areas where he can have the most impact quickly out of the gate.
After eight years of liberal Democratic governors and especially after the past two years of full Democratic control of both the governorship and the General Assembly weakening abortion restrictions and curbing gun rights, it’s understandable that the Republican grassroots want a sharp, immediate political U-turn.
There’s no reason to think, however, that Mr. Youngkin intends to break his campaign promises to them.
But first things first. Even before Mr. Youngkin puts forth any legislative proposals, he must begin by clearing out all of the political appointees throughout the bureaucracy in Richmond installed by outgoing Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam and his predecessor, Terry McAuliffe, and replacing them with personnel who will faithfully carry out (and not seek to block or sabotage) his agenda.
Mr. Youngkin mustn’t make the same mistake Donald Trump naively made when he became president in 2017. Mr. Trump left in place far too many holdovers from previous administrations burrowed throughout the bureaucracy who worked nonstop to undermine his agenda at every turn, particularly through critical leaks to the media.
As for competing demands for his legislative attention, Mr. Youngkin is a highly successful former corporate executive and can walk and chew gum at the same time. The issues he will be dealing with are neither “either/or” nor a zero-sum game.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and Richmond won’t be rebuilt in one, either.
Conservative activists, regardless of whatever their pet issues are, also need to remember that whatever Mr. Youngkin delivers will be infinitely preferable to the liberal-left agenda they would have gotten from a second term of Mr. McAuliffe.
Finally, just as an aside, it’s a relief that the Post — whose editorial page has never endorsed a GOP candidate for Virginia governor since it began offering endorsements in 1976 — can no longer note with glee how “Republicans haven’t won statewide in Virginia since 2009.”
While that claim wasn’t untrue, it was only half the story and one that required two giant asterisks. First, Mr. McAuliffe would not have won the governorship in 2013 absent the third-party candidacy of Republican-turned-Libertarian spoiler Robert Sarvis.
The following year, Mr. Sarvis likewise saved Democratic Sen. Mark Warner from defeat with a second pointless spoiler candidacy. In neither case is that something you would have known if you read only The Washington Post, which consistently omitted that inconvenient truth.
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