Democracy died in Virginia Tuesday night with the victory of Republican Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin, despite Washington Post columnist Max Boot warning us all about the candidacy of a 21st-century authoritarian.
On Sunday, in his last column before Election Day, Boot cautioned that Youngkin was an undercover disciple for those who pledged to destroy the republic through the audacious demands of election integrity.
“Imagine that you lived in Italy in 1922, Germany in 1933, Spain in 1936, Argentina in 1973, Russia in 2000, Venezuela in 2002, Turkey in 2014 — or any other country on the verge of losing its democracy to strongman rule,” Boot opened his piece. “What would be the most important issue on your mind? Would it be what’s taught in high schools? Or the fate of democracy itself?”
The crime, Boot explained, was Youngkin’s affiliation with the same party as former President Donald Trump.
“Only after winning the nomination did [Youngkin] admit that the 2020 election was ‘certifiably fair,‘ but he keeps genuflecting to Trumpian concerns about ‘election integrity’ — code words for the big lie. He even donated $1 million of his own money to a political action committee that supports Republican candidates who echo Trump’s bogus claims of fraud,” Boot wrote. “You can split the difference on taxes or spending. You can’t split the difference on democracy as Youngkin is trying to do.”
Virginia voters were warned. A candidate running on a platform of parental choice in schools and fair elections was the replication of Adolf Hitler’s German rise in 1933. Democracy dies in darkness, and it died in Virginia.
We all now know what Boot would have been doing in 1933, then, writing snarky columns about how stupid Hitler is and how grubby and uncouth his followers are.
The week prior to Election Day, Boot indicted Republicans as having descended into “sedition.”
“The GOP is now led by unprincipled opportunists, such as House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who have allowed their party to be captured by the crazies,” Boot wrote.
The absurdity of Boot’s insinuations was replicated throughout the Post’s coverage of the Virginia races, which attempted to exonerate the Democrat Party’s own racist history while painting Republicans with the broad brush of white supremacy. While Boot hysterically hammered away at Youngkin’s support for election integrity as some form of grim authoritarianism, the paper ran editorials to perpetuate the desperate talking point that systemic racism carried Republicans to the finish line. Democrats so desperately sought to use this line of attack that the Lincoln Project even staged a racist hoax to fake a made-up narrative.
Under the standard of guilt by association and generous extrapolation, the Washington Post missed the Democrat Party’s most glaring misconduct. Who shared the same party with Democrat Terry McAuliffe? The Ku Klux Klan. Which party elected a governor who wore either blackface or a Klan hood? The Democrats. Which party privatized elections in the hands of political allies? The Democrats.
But a Republican who made open parental involvement in their children’s education the crux of his campaign is the worst thing to ever happen to democracy? In Boot’s world, it is.
