The American Spectator

GeronL| 4.21.09 @ 11:52AM

Good for them. Maybe this time they can have some better security?

Red Phillips| 4.21.09 @ 6:12PM

Youth for Western Civilization is really doing some good work. Good for them.

Pete| 4.21.09 @ 11:13PM

This time--make sure he can be heard!! Damned liberal thugs.

jeffersonian1| 4.25.09 @ 10:10PM

It is fascinating and strange to watch the latest incarnation of Virgil Goode as he emerges from involuntary retirement and begins a career making speeches to groups that are among the most conservative on the political spectrum.

Fascinating and strange because no one seems to remember the history of Mr. Goode or to pay much attention to the fluidity with which he has espoused varying and widely disparate political ideologies over the years, often adopting one ideology that reflected the mood of the electorate at one time but abandoning it with the winds of change.

It’s doubtful, for example, that many or any of his GMU hosts will realize that Goode ran for his first elective office in 1973 as a supporter of the gubernatorial campaign of the Virginia liberal firebrand Lieutenant Governor Henry E. Howell. Howell has the distinction of being the most liberal individual ever to be a credible candidate for Virginia’s governorship. In 1973, both Howell and Goode ran for office as independents, apparently because they viewed the Democratic Party of Virginia as too conservative even though it had been taken over the year before by the McGovern wing of the national party. Goode, echoing Howell’s attacks on public utilities and the conservative establishment and pledging support for the Equal Rights Amendment won. Howell lost, though with 49.7% of the vote, to one of the architects of Virginia’s conservative establishment and of Massive Resistance, former Governor Mills E. Godwin.

As a member of the Virginia Senate, Goode did join the Democratic Caucus though he was well known to be one of its most liberal members and was closely identified with a small liberal faction that included Senators Joe Fitzpatrick of Norfolk (Howell’s alter ego and chief political strategist), Adelard Brault and Joe Gartlan from Northern Virginia and L. Douglas Wilder of Richmond (the Senate’s first African American member since reconstruction).

Interestingly, within a few years Goode broke his pledge to support the E.R.A. after polling data showed it to be unpopular in his district and, in one instance, hid rather than cast a vote either for or against ratification.

Throughout most of the seventies and eighties Goode remained a fairly consistent member of the liberal bloc, helping organize the “coup” that installed the liberal Adelard Brault as Democratic leader, supporting the election and reelection of President Jimmy Carter, and developing a particularly close relationship with Doug Wilder. Indeed when Wilder ran for Lt. Governor in 1985, Goode placed his name in nomination with a blisteringly, race-based appeal that savaged the then elderly Godwin as the “overseer of Chuckatuck”. Given the historical record of the frequent cruelty of plantation overseers, Goode was essentially branding Godwin not only a racist but one of the most vile and violent types of racists.

During his time in the State Senate, Goode also twice sought the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate (first as a standard bearer for the liberal wing, second as a more conservative alternative) but was roundly defeated in both efforts. Some suggest that Goode’s anger at not receiving the level of support to which he thought he was entitled mark the beginning of his rift with the Democratic Party.

In his successful 1996 campaign for Congress, Goode ran as a fairly traditional moderate southern Democratic. In speeches and television ads, he stressed the need to protect and defend Medicare and Social Security (presumably from the likes of then-Speaker Newt Gingrich) as well as the need for a balanced federal budget. Another issue which provided a clear contrast between Goode and his very conservative Republican opponent that year was Goode’s unalterable, at the time, opposition to the use of taxpayer money to fund private academies. This more liberal position certainly had more resonance with an important part of the electorate as the Congressional district included Prince Edward County which infamously closed its public schools and established a private academy in an attempt to nullify the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

Upon his arrival in Washington, Goode, having served on the Virginia Senate’s Finance Committee, was apparently miffed that he was not appointed to the powerful House Appropriations Committee as a freshman. Most close observers, however, identify the Republican takeover of both houses of the Virginia legislature as the motivating factor in Goode’s move to the Republican conference. As Republicans would be drawing the lines of Congressional districts and Goode’s home county was in a geographically precarious location, one individual who served with Goode in the legislature said, “I knew he was going to switch and that he’d switch before reapportionment. I just wondered how he was going to maneuver to make it happen.”

As a Republican, Goode’s strange ideological wanderings continued. Traditionally, most of Virginia’s Republican Congressmen for the last 40 years (i.e. Caldwell Butler, Stan Parris, Herb Bateman, Tom Bliley, Frank Wolfe) have been quite conservative but within the mainstream of the conservative movement and their fellow House colleagues. Rather than embrace this tradition, Goode affiliated himself with a small faction of House Republicans including such individuals as Ron Paul, Tom Tancredo, B-1 Bob Dornan, Roscoe P. Bartlett and Randy “Duke” Cunningham – a group more known for making “colorful” comments during morning hour speeches or to cable news shows than for legislative acumen or accomplishment.

Apparently, it was during this time that Goode developed his fixation with a “close the borders” immigration policy, construction of the Great Wall of Mexico, and strong distaste for, and fear of, persons of the Islamic faith – legislative priorities that apparently a majority of his economically challenged district did not find especially relevant to their everyday lives in November of 2008. Indeed, when Goode left Congress after serving for 12 years, he did so without a single, notable legislative achievement to his name.

And so, Mr. Goode arrives at GMU having traveled a long way from his days as a Henry Howell independent, his heated rhetoric branding one of Virginia’s most honorable and honored conservative Governors as a racist and even his first congressional campaign. What a long strange trip it’s been.

Rachael| 4.30.09 @ 5:25PM

Wow Jeffersonian. That is really interesting. I never could make sense of the way he voted and he always seemed like a self-interested creep, but i never took the time to put it all together. I can't believe he supported Carter and now has completely changed his tune. Maybe he has multiple personality disorder or something.

I didn't think it was possible, but he creeps me out more now then he did before.

jojo| 1.11.10 @ 2:59AM

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