[Townhall] Ever since its citizens liked Ike in ’52 (other than one brief hiccup in 1964 when Johnson trounced Goldwater almost everywhere), the Commonwealth of Virginia had voted reliably Republican, until 2008. That year, in a wave election, Democrat Barack Obama won several states Republicans typically win, like Florida, North Carolina and Arizona. One could have been forgiven, then, for thinking Virginia would come back to the fold after the hipness wore off and the cold, hard reality of quasi-socialist governance became all-too-real. After all, this is Old Dominion we’re talking about, the land of Monticello and Williamsburg, of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and more prominent founding Americans than anywhere else. From Nathaniel Bacon to George Mason to Patrick Henry and countless more, freedom and resistance to tyranny have been an indelible part of that great state’s heritage.But sadly, the blue never wore off. It only grew deeper and more dominant, until last week, when the tiniest tint of red faded into the darkness like the last sunset of a dying man, never to return.
That’s right, folks. With a Democratic governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, both United States senators, seven of 11 representatives, and now both State houses, the Commonwealth of Virginia is now officially a blue state on par with the socialistic dystopias of California, New York, and New England. It’s been a long time coming, albeit a slow, gradual march to the abyss, but the land of the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and "sic semper tyrannis" has now become the land of the snowflakes and social justice warriors.
Which leaves many wondering, how on earth did this happen? Fox News host Laura Ingraham’s Wednesday night analysis may have gotten the attention of Media Matters, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less true. To Ingraham, the "road to Democratic dominance" in the formerly right-of-center state was paved with demographic changes that began taking place long before Trump’s 2015 trip down that New York City escalator.
"Virginia's foreign-born population nearly doubled from 2000 and 2017," said Ingraham, "and these immigrants are mostly concentrated in Northern Virginia. Fairfax County, Loudoun County, Prince William County, outside of D.C., and they are altering the demographic makeup of the state - and, as The Washington Post and others have pointed out, the electorate."