Jim Webb and George Allen: Reagan Light and Dark.

by Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 11/29/10

I received an invitation to celebrate the new Tea Party victory with some old line conservatives, naming Dick Armey and former Virginia governor George Allen, who might be considered Vengeance Demons from the Reagan period. At the beginning of the Tea Party I warned against this and so encouraged the wise, the joyful and the competent to join and some of them, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin and Rick Perry did. Because the Tea Party could save America or it could destroy it.

Allen’s was one of the most corrupt and incompetent administrations in the history of Virginia and possibly in the history of America. That Virginians want him back now as senator in such numbers suggests that in spite of some positive steps toward self reliance by some state legislators generally in the Midwest, the mainstream, at least in Virginia, wants only revenge.

Why would Virginians in the first place want a California knucklehead in cowboy boots (in Virginia?) whose only claim to legitimacy is that his father was a famous football coach? Because he, like Gingrich, Armey and W. Bush, is counterpoint to a whole group of other Yankee interlopers in the South and Texas who had already come to speak on the South’s behalf; the innocent liberals and naive culture priests who inevitably follow in the wake of the conqueror. They arrived to removed all pictures of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall from the alumni halls and make sure there was not a Dixie battle flag in sight on the county square. The price of this reverse engineering of the South’s ancient memory could now be high: The price could be George Allen, not only as the new senator from Virginia, but as President elect in 2016. Because as one commentator at The Hill says, Allen only wants to be President.

The Confederate flag and the symbols of the antebellum South are often used by us Yanks to compare the South and Texas to Nazi Germany. But it is a metaphor of convenience. (That is, propaganda.) The invasion of the South does not organically match with Eisenhower’s invasion of Germany in 1944. It better compares with Napolean’s invasion of Germany and Russia in 1803. And there, as Napolean freed Europe’s slaves, we, the New Yorkers, freed our own on the Southern plantations. Napolean’s aftermath would bring resentment and bitterness and the inevitable and predictable countervailing project that was Bismarck, with war to follow for 100 years. And that could very well be George Allen as President in 2016; an American Bismarck, seeking vengeance.

Our future hinges on the elections of 2012. The Kennedy instinct is spent, the mission accomplished. The era is over and a new era rises and it could go anywhere. If Huck, Rick or Sarah do not metabolize the good energies of Tea Party in 2012, the malevolent energies will take us by 2016.

And that could be a job for Jim Webb. In the current climate I do not see him holding his Senate seat. It will likely go to Allen.

Webb worked for Reagan and Allen is a Reagan Ranch Presidential Scholar. Like the children of Abraham, one walks in the light and one in the shadow. If Webb loses ahead to Allen he must considered it his warrior’s fate and destiny to run again against him, perhaps in single combat warfare for higher office. Because maybe then only he can save the South and the rest of us too; maybe he will be the last man standing to save America.