Syndicated columnist George Will writes that candidate Jim Webb “is spoiling for a fight.” Then the writer goes on to point out that when it comes to standing up/fighting for what he believes Webb has a long history of being the last guy to pick a fight with.
Will seems to relish the prospect of an all-out battle in the Old Dominion between the iconoclastic Webb and the affable Sen. George Allen, who is the incumbent. Both men were athletes in their college days: At Annapolis Webb was a boxer; at UVa. Allen was a fourth-string quarterback.
Furthermore, Will, an astute observer of matters political, seems to dismiss Webb’s Democratic primary opponent, Harris Miller, as inconsequential. Here’s a sample of Will’s piece in the Union Leader:
“‘...It was Iraq,’ Webb says, ‘that convinced me the Republican Party has gone crazy.’ He says: ‘I warned them early, they went in precipitously. We need to get out carefully, we do not need to be an occupying force.’ Carefully, but within two years. Almost seven months before the invasion of Iraq [Webb] warned (in the Washington Post, Sept. 4, 2002) that before moving from ‘containment to unilateral war and a long-term occupation of Iraq’ we should remember that the Soviet Union was defeated by patient, intense containment.”
Since 1985, in various formats, SLANT -- an independent voice based in Richmond's Fan District -- has offered its readers original commentary on politics and popular culture, including cartoons and selected sundries. Warning: Sometimes that means satirical content. All rights are reserved.
1 comment:
Webb is a long shot with little name recognition, but the more I know about George Allen the scarier he seems. He is salivating at the prospect of being the 2008 Republican presidential candidate and I’ve yet to see anything in his background that would warrant this.
I have seen him twice in public, at a local high school Town Hall Meeting and at this year’s Shad Planking in Wakefield. He definitely has popular appeal but I have yet to see substance. And if true, his rumored tactic of pressuring the Marriage Amendment through the Virginia legislature in order to have a social issue, a boogeyman, to stir up unenlightened and religiously led rural conservatives to the polls – where while voting “yes” on the marriage amendment would automatically check off each of the Republican squares - seems akin to the worst of high school politics. Virginia, the Mother of Presidents, deserves better, and Jim Webb may well be that.
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