Glenn Youngkin’s response to a question last week might have been a little too subtle for his own good.
When I asked the Virginia governor during an interview at the annual Milken Institute conference if he was planning to dust off his fleece vest, get out on the campaign trail and enter the contest for the Republican presidential nomination, he delivered a well-rehearsed reply, colourful in content but with a specificity that was lost on most immediate observers.
“I haven’t written a book, and I’m not in Iowa. I’m spending time representing Virginia this year,” he said.
As some outlets began to report his withdrawal from presidential contention, offstage his aides were quick to clarify that the operative words in that sentence were “this year.”
The Virginia legislative session has already concluded for 2023 and state politics for the rest of the year will be dominated by critical midterm elections. Reflecting the state’s purplish hue, and mirroring almost precisely the national balance, Republicans have a narrow majority in the House of Delegates while Democrats have a wafer-thin edge in the Senate. Mr. Youngkin, who has a solid approval rating after his big win in 2021, will spend much of his time between now and November in the swing districts of the commonwealth trying to turn the General Assembly fully red, rather than in the cornfields of Iowa or the firehouses of New Hampshire.
But there’s been no decision about a presidential run. Mr. Youngkin is loitering with intent — waiting to see whether the two big beasts of the Republican animal kingdom, Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, trip up and find themselves in a bear trap. You can see the logic. Despite his status as the firm favourite, Mr. Trump’s legal and political difficulties continue to hang like a smoggy cloud over his third presidential bid. Mr. DeSantis, after a mildlycalamitouscouple of months, is running out of feet to shoot himself in. If you’re Mr. Youngkin, why blunder in now and give them both someone to aim at when you can focus on governing your state, building a solid political résumé, and be ready for the call should it come? But it’s a dubious strategy. Waiting for Mr. Trump to trip up has been the Republican version of “Waiting for Godot” for eight years, and Mr. DeSantis is probably due for a rebound. History tells us that late entries to a presidential race are seldom rewarded for their forbearance. Beyond incumbents, there hasn’t been a candidate in more than half a century who won his party’s nomination entering the race in the election year itself.
Neither does there appear to be a wave of pent-up popular excitement for the undeclared Virginia governor waiting to overtop the dams of the Republican contest. Mr. Youngkin is currently in an exciting three-way tie for seventh place in the primary field at 1 per cent, according to the latest RealClearPolitics average, behind Sen. Tim Scott and political ingenue Vivek Ramaswamy. That is a little below the level of support the late John McCain used to quip meant you were pretty much down to direct family members, staffers and close personal friends.
This is all a pity. Republicans would be well-advised to look harder at the Virginia governor.
In a state that has trended increasingly blue — Joe Biden won it by 10 points in 2020, doubling Hillary Clinton’s margin four years earlier — Mr. Youngkin won by astute campaigning on issues on which conservative positions are evidently close to a stateside consensus.
In that campaign and now in a year and a half in office, the Virginia governor has established himself as the foremost exponent of what we might term a new Republican fusionism: happy culture warrior, taking on the establishment orthodoxies on critical race theory, transgender rights and the rest of the extremist woke tyranny. But he’s also scored governing successes on the economy, delivering a solid tax cut and focusing efforts on lifting living standards for the poorest Virginians.
On the Republicans’ most neuralgic electoral issue right now, abortion, he has adopted a position that probably comes closest to the national centre of gravity — supporting a 15-week limit, which the Democratic Virginia Senate rejected.
But it’s the style as well as the substance that suggests Mr. Youngkin is a beacon of hope leading the way out of our stultified, polarised, deadening political debate. He eschews the grievance politics that animates the right and focuses on practical politics. His battle with the educational establishment was framed as simply giving parents the right to determine what their children are taught.
His electoral success in a nearly blue state, an early record of achievement in a divided government, and a character that recalls days when conservatives used to care about honesty, integrity, intelligence and decency are pointing the clear way to an enduring majority. He’s far from a perfect model. But if he really is a nonstarter, it’s a sorry statement on the condition of the modern Republican Party.
The Wall Street Journal
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