Larry Miller Letter on the Republican Rift

Living on the fringes of the Greater Richmond Metropolitan area, I am grateful that Style Weekly is available online. This week's edition features a letter to the editor written by Larry Miller, admired by many for his successful leadership of the Chesterfield County Republican Committee and for his backbone.

Republican Rift: The Domino Effect

I found your “Fight for the Right” article interesting (Cover Story, March 15). What you didn’t pull together was that the Republican senators who went along with Gov. Mark Warner did immeasurably more damage to the party as a whole than simply repudiating the message of their party.

In handing Gov. Warner the budget victory, they made him look to the rest of the country like an effective Democrat who could get things done with a Republican majority. This helped boost his successor, Tim Kaine, who benefited greatly by wrapping himself in Warner’s success. This, combined with a bungled Kilgore campaign, led to another loss of the Executive Mansion by Republicans. Now we see Mark Warner touted as presidential material. Actions have consequences … and these consequences are good for neither the commonwealth nor the country.

Many of the taxing senators are relics of the time when they had to bend to the will of the majority Democrats. Old habits are hard to break. I guess the old quotation, “You have to go along to get along,” is just another way of saying, “You have to stand for something or you will fall for anything.”

Republicans only thought we had a majority. That will have to wait until either time or the electoral process removes these gentlemen from office and replaces them with senators who realize we don’t have a revenue problem … we have a spending problem.

Larry Miller
Past Chairman
Chesterfield County
Republican Committee