After Virginia, Fight the Culture War With the Aim of Victory, by Josh Hammer

Tuesday night’s GOP electoral romp in Virginia, headlined by Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin’s victory over former governor and longtime Clinton crony Terry McAuliffe, ought to be a watershed moment for the trajectory of American conservative politics and the Republican Party.

The sweep of the Old Dominion’s governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general positions, making for the first statewide GOP victories in the once-solidly red commonwealth since 2009, amounts to a repudiation of the decades of pablum dished out by Republicans’ well-paid, but myopic, K Street consultant class. That conventional wisdom, best encapsulated by the Republican National Committee’s infamous “autopsy” following Mitt Romney’s defeat to Barack Obama, held that the party’s electoral path forward was best realized by sticking to the dog-eared free-market playbook and avoiding the contentious “cultural” issues of immigration, identity politics, and the like. …

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