Do State Democrats, Too, Have a Purity-Test Problem?

Virginia's Republican Party has taken a lot of heat for zealotry in recent months. Critics say the GOP -- particularly under its recently deposed chairman, Jeff Frederick -- has spent more time worrying about whose heart was not pure enough to belong than it has spent reaching out to potential converts and inviting them to come join the party.

The rap says the activist cadre is too out of touch: It cares more about imposing ideological litmus tests than about winning elections or addressing the concerns of everyday Virginians. The fact that Del. Robert Marshall nearly beat Jim Gilmore for the GOP Senate nomination last year offers pretty convincing evidence for the thesis.

The true believers inadvertently underscored the point recently when they slammed House Minority Whip Eric Cantor for starting a new policy group. "Social conservatives are blasting the National Council for a New America," Politico reported recently, "as a misguided and weak-kneed initiative that is out of touch with the GOP rank and file . . . .Social conservatives couldn't help but notice that the policy areas the group will focus on included no mention of same-sex marriage, immigration or abortion."

They all but prove it when they insist the GOP's electoral problems have arisen because its candidates are insufficiently hard-core on social issues, and victory will go to the candidates who veer even further to the right. (Marshall would have done better against Mark Warner than Gilmore did? Seriously?)

Yet it seems fair to ask whether the Virginia Democratic Party has a similar problem. If the rap against State Sen. Creigh Deeds holds water, then the answer might be yes.

"CONSERVATISM Could Hurt Deeds in Democratic Race," read a Washington Post headline the other day. The article ran down a list of "politically charged issues" on which Deeds has strayed from liberal orthodoxy:

He supported a family-life education program that described abstinence before marriage and fidelity within marriage as "moral obligations and not matters of personal opinion or personal choice." He supported displaying the words "In God We Trust" in public schools. He opposed granting in-state college tuition to illegal immigrants. He supported allowing individuals with concealed-weapons permits to carry their firearms in bars and restaurants. He used to oppose measures to close the so-called gun-show loophole. He voted to ban partial-birth abortion. He supported Virginia's marriage amendment, although he since has renounced the measure. And so on.

"I am a moderate," Deeds says. "I always have tried to look for a middle way because I think that's where most of the people are."

That, says Rep. Gerald Connolly, is a problem. "It's an issue for him," the congressman says. "He still has explaining to do in Northern Virginia on his record. No question about it."

If Deeds' social conservatism does cost him votes in the primary on June 9, that may suggest a strain of doctrinal rigidity in the Democratic Party nearly as contrary to mainstream sentiment as the GOP's own militancy.

Outside the fever swamps of party activism, are there really many Virginians troubled by the idea that marital fidelity is not merely a personal choice but a moral obligation? Probably not -- just as there are probably not too many who are not troubled by abortion procedures whose distance from infanticide is measured in seconds and centimeters. (Indeed, a recent Gallup Poll brought the surprising news that, for the first time, more Americans identify themselves as pro-life than as pro-choice.)

Similarly, while the bulk of the state probably doesn't approve of the glee with which some right-wingers bash immigrants generally, a lot of Virginians find it hard to square granting in-state tuition to someone who should not even be in the country.

THE MARSHALL-Newman amendment banning same-sex marriage and all similar arrangements passed by a hefty 57 percent margin. That doesn't make it right -- it isn't -- but that does make opposition to same-sex marriage a consummately centrist proposition. As for carrying concealed weapons into bars and restaurants, even Gov. Tim Kaine -- who once used public funds to support the Million Mom March for tougher gun-control laws -- is no absolutist. Last year he signed legislation permitting commonwealth's attorneys to pack concealed heat wherever they go, without a permit or the instruction required to obtain one.

The syllogism is pretty simple: If positions that put Deeds in the mainstream of general public opinion put him outside the mainstream of activist Democratic circles, then where does that leave the party activists?

Four years ago Deeds was unopposed for the attorney general nomination, and lost to Republican Bob McDonnell in the closest election in state history. The degree to which he suffers in the current nomination contest because his centrist views do not pass an ideological purity test might signify the degree to which the moderate wing of the Democratic Party has diminished since then.

My thoughts do not aim for your assent -- just place them alongside your own reflections for a while.

--Robert Nozick.

Contact A. Barton Hinkle at (804) 649-6627 or .