Not long after polls closed in Virginia on Tuesday, it became clear that Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin would sweep the gubernatorial race from a former governor in a state that went blue for Joe Biden by 10 points just one year ago.
There are plenty of people to thank for this victory over Terry McAuliffe, of course: Biden, whose failed economy and response to the coronavirus has been disastrous for Virginia’s working families, and his Vice President Kamala Harris and friend Barack Obama. There’s also union boss Randi Weingarten, The Atlantic ideas section, an out-of-control state legislature, law-and-order-flouting district attorneys installed by George Soros, Democrat blackface kings Ralph Northam and Mark Herring, abortion extremists, critical race theory champions, the Loudoun County Public Schools and its corrupt Superintendent Scott Ziegler, woke and elitist school boards, and Merrick “War-On-Parents” Garland.
But it turns out the one person to did the most to propel Youngkin to the governor’s mansion was none other than Terry McAuliffe himself. And it all boils down to this clip:
“I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach,” McAuliffe said during a September debate with Youngkin.
The Hill called his remark a “blunder,” and a delusional Washington Post columnist on election day referred to the line as a “gaffe,” as in an unintentional slip of the tongue. But if that’s true, McAuliffe is quite a gaffe machine. On the contrary, he’s doubled down on the anti-parents-rights rhetoric as a hallmark of his campaign.
Today, Terry McAuliffe doubled-down on his statement that he "[doesn't] think parents should be telling schools what they should teach." He justified this position by saying, falsely, that "everybody clapped when [he] said it." pic.twitter.com/Ir4Nqpexwj
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) November 1, 2021
The two gubernatorial candidates had the usual political platforms and pet projects, but in a state embroiled in a culture war controversy over something as important as education and parents’ rights over their own children, this particular stand from McAuliffe turned out to be the most consequential of all.
As the Democrat insisted parents should stay out of the education system, woke school boards stifled concerned parents, the White House and National School Boards association were colluding to brand those parents as domestic terrorists, and the U.S. Department of Justice was preparing to send federal law enforcement after them. Meanwhile, Virginia public schools were pushing for radical transgender policies as one school covered up a male student allegedly raping a girl in the women’s bathroom and then sending him off to reportedly assault another girl in a different public school.
Terry McAuliffe routinely lied about critical race theory not being in Virginia schools, even though it’s explicitly taught throughout the state. In fact, evidence shows McAuliffe was actually the first Virginia governor to have promoted it. To close out his campaign, he took the tack that there are just too many white teachers in the state, so he would reduce them and “diversify” to “make everybody feel comfortable.”
So when McAuliffe said he didn’t think parents should be telling schools what to do, this is what parents saw him advocating for instead — not their rights and the best interests of their children, but corruption, coverups, indoctrination, division, and racism.
On Tuesday, Virginia parents got the final say, and it turns out they do think they should be telling the schools what to teach their own children.
