Don Blankenship Is Rising as the Republican Party Sinks
Spiting the liberals was reason enough for Republican voters to go for Roy Moore. Same with Blankenship. Same, for that matter, with Trump.
MICHAEL TOMASKY
05.08.18 5:08 AM ET
Seriously? Don Blankenship can win that GOP Senate primary in West Virginia?
It sure looks possible. I doubt we’d see Donald Trump tweeting what he tweeted Monday morning, begging the state’s Republican voters to steer clear of Blankenship, if the Republicans weren’t afraid that he could win. In response, Blankenship went anti-swamp more than anti-Trump. Swampy Republicans were “misinforming” the president, whose agenda Blankenship would support in the Senate. In fact, said Blankenship, he is “Trumpier than Trump.”
How can this be happening? The guy spent a year in prison related to the deaths of 29 men in the worst coal disaster in the county in 40 years. What has it come to, that voters could do this? Of course even if he does win, it’s just the party nomination, not a Senate seat—yet. But we can no longer say anything’s impossible. I remember the geniuses who said Donald Trump becoming president was impossible. I was one of them.
I grew up in West Virginia, and I know—or knew, once upon a time—its politics very well. When I was a kid it was a fairly liberal state. For something else I’m writing, I just happened the other day to go look up the roll call votes on the civil rights and voting rights acts of 1964 and 1965. All five of the state’s House representatives (then; it only has three now) voted for both.
The Southernization of the state started in the 1980s as the number of union jobs decreased and social issues came to the fore. That crescendoed in 2000, when George W. Bush beat Al Gore there. It was a surprise to the national pundits but not to me. The state was pretty conservative already by then.
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