RICHMOND — History told Virginia Democrats it wasn’t going to be easy.

For the past 32 years, the party that wins the White House has lost the governorship — a trend that often portends shifts in national politics.

In narrow triumph, Dems push through landmark legislation

Meteorologists, correct on occasion, say conditions will be favorable today for voters to venture from their homes and select mostly from guys with perfect hair as representatives to serve for the next four years. Here in the central Shenandoah Valley, it will be partly cloudy with highs near 60. For President Barack Obama looking on from the capital, it might be decidedly chillier. If it’s fall, leaves and the electorate’s mood must be changing.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Robert F. McDonnell hammered home his message of jobs and the economy during a Friday get-out-the-vote rally before 200 people at Willow Oak Plaza in Waynesboro.

Michael Steele is singing a dramatically different and more upbeat tune these days.

A year ago, when he took over as chairman of the Republican National Committee in the wake of Barack Obama’s presidential election romp, Steele’s party was singing the blues.

VERONA – The barbecue tasted good at Sixth District Rep. Bob Goodlatte’s Verona picnic Saturday for statewide Republican and area House of Delegates candidates because the latest polls have all three members of the statewide ticket with healthy leads over their Democratic opponents.

Tingles are racing up legs in that bristling sphere known as the left, this time over Virginia gubernatorial candidate Robert F. McDonnell’s utterance of the queen mother of dirty words. The dread term spilled from the same mouth McDonnell kisses his wife with during a radio interview last week. Fudge.

CHARLOTTESVILLE — Most students attending Central Virginia public schools will have a chance to watch President Barack Obama’s live back-to-school address Tuesday, but some will have to wait until school administrators review the recording first.

In the spring, consultant Frank Luntz admonished the Republican Party to defeat President Barack Obama’s health care reform initiative, including national health insurance (also called universal health care or a single-payer system), according to Politico. If that’s true, Republicans are putting party politics before the needs of the country, and they may be winning the debate. 

A trio of Democrats seeking office huddled Wednesday to talk among themselves about education, providing an evening’s respite from the health care wars but not from rhetoric beaten to a pulp by the raw might of partisan twaddle. The federal No Child Left Behind law is damnable (kind of), public schools are positively starved for cash, student-teacher ratios must be kept low and hang those accursed unfunded mandates.

7 vie for nomination to replace retiring Del. Saxman

An editorial piece by the Richmond Times-Dispatch published July 20 in The News Virginian (“Plumber’s point pertinent”) reminds me of a liberal tactic that is being repeated today. 

I hear daily, as do most of you, that the “government” is the enemy. Conservative radio talking heads, most leading Republicans and conservatives and a great many Independents all complain about the government interfering in their lives.

The Republican Party is looking for more than a victory from Bob McDonnell in November.

When Arlen Specter announced that he was leaving the Republican Party, it seemed first and foremost like an attempt at self-preservation. He didn’t think he could win the Republican primary in Pennsylvania because his party had moved too far to the right to elect him, so he became a Democrat. Simple. Or maybe not so simple.