Reply to Do you foresee a future where the DMV region becomes purple? What would have to happen?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It’s only recently been as solidly blue as far out as it is now. The issue is that you have a large proportion of Federal workers who do not like to work in chaos. I traditionally was a Republican, but the kinds of policies that I care about are not what this group does. I am fiscal conservative but more libertarian in personal rights. This is many more of my colleagues than you suppose. Our politics didn’t change that much, but politics changed around us. I lived the chaos of the last Trump administration and saw the absolute rot at the core of it. It also disrupted my agency’s mission. So there’s an inspired population to stay blue in this area.[/quote]

This is very true and explains a lot of why Virginia flipped blue from purple. The Republican party used to actually be a party of conservatism, meaning a lot of status quo and preservation of institutions and any change should be slow and reasoned. That has changed a lot in the last 20 years and now it's not really clear what Republicans believe and there doesn't really appear to be a guiding principle. Trump is mostly a populist which means his policies blow wherever public opinion does (watch his bizarre tightwire act on abortion for instance, going far to the right of most Republicans in 2016 in order to capture the evangelical vote and then swinging left and now landing on this dumb "state's rights" argument that was obviously just a politically expedient answer to blunt the impact of Dobbs on his electoral chances this year). His acolytes vary from far right Christian conservatives who are honestly pretty scary to "moderate" Republicans who are actually just interested in preserving their own power and access (the Mitch McConnells and Ted Cruzes). Actual moderates like Romney, George W Bush ("compassionate conservatism") or even Paul Ryan are gone.

And it's that last group that describes your average Northern Virginia Republican. So they've essentially left the party though can be activated occasionally when the lefty politics of the Democratic party run amok (see e.g. Governor Youngkin as a reaction to "wokism" in schools and in city councils). But they can't vote for Trump and his cronies because that's just chaos and power mongering. Basically the opposite of the old, stay-the-course conservatism of the 80s and 90s that most of them grew up with. They'll hold their nose and vote for Harris or Kaine because at least those are predictable, non-crazy options that they can work with, even if they'll never feel totally politically aligned.

The Republican party abandoned educated conservatives.[/quote]

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