TWO FORMER Virginia governors, Timothy M. Kaine and George Allen, are running for the U.S. Senate seat that Mr. Allen fumbled away six years ago. They are partisan stalwarts who disagree on deficit reduction, energy policy, health care, abortion, the death penalty and much else. The contrast in character and intellect is even more stark. On those grounds, Mr. Kaine, a Democrat, is a better choice by leaps and bounds than Mr. Allen, a Republican.
We happen to agree on many issues with Mr. Kaine, who favors a balanced approach to deficit-cutting. He would allow Bush-era tax cuts for the rich to expire — he’d set the bar at incomes of $500,000 a year, twice the level proposed by the Obama administration — while targeting some overseas military bases for cuts.
Mr. Allen favors a different approach, having signed a pledge never to raise taxes, thereby allowing ideology — and specifically anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist — to trump bipartisan compromise. After excluding the military from cost-cutting, he offers only fuzzy ideas for charting a path toward a balanced budget: cutting regulations (but which ones?), goosing the oil and gas industries (which are already booming) and implementing enormous phased-in spending cuts — again unspecified.
Mr. Allen and the anonymous, deep-pocketed allies who have paid for the barrage of TV ads against Mr. Kaine have traded in distortions. They accuse Mr. Kaine of advocating draconian cuts to the military that would result from automatic spending cuts known as sequestration. In fact, Mr. Kaine has urged a compromise to avoid such an outcome. They say Mr. Kaine wants to raise federal taxes on everyone; he has never proposed or endorsed such a policy.
Mr. Allen paints himself as a fiscal conservative, but general fund spending jumped when he was governor, in the boom years of the ’90s. It was flat during Mr. Kaine’s term, which coincided with the sharp economic downturn of 2008-09. Moreover, by embracing the Bush-era tax cuts and opposing their repeal, Mr. Allen helped dig the massive fiscal ditch in which this country is mired.
In their debates, Mr. Kaine has displayed a command of detail while Mr. Allen trades in gauzy hyperbole. In one such exchange, it was apparent that Mr. Allen did not understand how birth-control pills work nor the implications of “personhood” legislation he supports, which declares that life begins at the moment of conception. As Mr. Kaine has pointed out, such a measure could imperil legal birth-control pills.
Mr. Kaine, admired as governor for his straight talk and civility, guided the state sure-handedly through the worst months of the recession. He made judicious budget cuts forced on him by plummeting revenue — for which Mr. Allen is now attacking him — while pursuing goals he’d set as a candidate, including broadening access to early childhood education.
He has refrained from raising questions about Mr. Allen’s character. But when a sitting U.S. senator brandishes a racist term to single out and humiliate a person of color — as Mr. Allen did with the “macaca” episode in his 2006 reelection campaign — the stain is not erased by the passage of six years.
That unscripted moment came from a man with a long-standing fondness for Confederate flags and who opposed a public holiday to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr.
In a Congress seized by partisan acrimony, Mr. Allen, who once pledged to knock Democrats’ “soft teeth down their whiny throats,” would be a force for divisiveness. Mr. Kaine, like his mentor Sen. Mark Warner, has the potential to be a deal-maker. That’s more what the Senate needs.
This is a huge endorsement. Both men have the same background as far as Virginia goes. It’s all in policy.
This is the biggest thing since the Creigh Deeds endorsement!
Does that mean you won’t be supporting Mr. timothy Kaine this year, Mr. Poke?
Too bad Creigh Deeds didn’t make it. He wouldn’t have been known as Governor Ultra-sound. Maybe we wouldn’t be making all the late night NATIONAL shows as the laughing stock.
And in other news, the sun rises in the East.
Most days….@MoM
Wow, that news came as such a shock I had to sit down for a few minutes and have a drink to recover.
Governor Allen is a bigot who loves Confederate flags and yells racial epithets at minorities. A man such as he is unfit for public office. Allen also increased state spending when he was governor while Governor Kaine did just the opposite. He supports Virginia’s ultrasounds and would no doubt support national legislation criminalizing abortion. We cannot have such a man representing us. If you support fiscal responsibility and personal liberty, vote for Tim Kaine for senator next month.
I do NOT want George Allen to represent me! Period!!! Exclamation mark!!!
@punchak
Me neither. But, I can’t pull the lever for Mr. Kaine. They both suck. What’s an independent like myself to do?
The Post really let George Allen have it. They pointed out how Kaine is a gentleman and didn’t target Allen’s lack of character.
The Allen ads are the most maddening and are full of lies. I wonder if people who lie for candidates feel like….well…I won’t say it.
Kaine didn’t increase taxes on the middle class. Allen did. He was a high roller.
Allen needs to take a refresher course in reproduction since he wants to insert himself in the middle of Virgnia’s reproductive cycle.
@marinm Never underestimate the power of gridlock voting. I’m going Obama/Allen. You don’t even have to like them.
No doubt. I’m all for that but I don’t know which part I want to gridlock more. The party of the laughable left or the party slightly to the right of them but still on the left?
My fear is that Allen will vote FOR those big government programs he says he hates….
@marinm
That is probably the most ridiculous remark I have heard this election cycle.
The Democrats and the Republicans are lightyears apart.
I shouldn’t dismiss endorsements as I sometimes do. Obama picked up a key endorsement recently:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/post/honey-boo-boo-endorses-obama/2012/10/16/039d609e-17d8-11e2-9855-71f2b202721b_blog.html
I hate to be petty about things, but do you think the first bill that a Senator Kaine may put forward for deficit reduction is to close all rest areas nationwide? After all, isn’t there a McDonalds everywhere in this country? It will rank up there with giving higher education funding by cutting it.
Clinton, I had to work on a little forgiveness of that one myself. Ok Ok, I am pretending he didnt do that. George Allen did more things I hated. I sure didnt like that rest stop thing though.
Thanks for reminding me. NOT 👿
I guess Tim Kaine just didn’t impress me as governor. I never thought I could trust him.
Perhaps it was because he followed Mark Warner, who I thought was a better governor even if I didn’t think he had to raise taxes (and when there was a huge surplus as a result, didn’t give them back).
@Moon-howler
You are absolutely right!
They are light years apart. The Democrats closed Gtmo, oh, wait. no….They Democrats reversed Bush’s programs , nope not there either………… Uh…The Democrats cut spen…oh wait…. Um…the Democrats increased the civil liber…no….
Yep… light years apart.
Aparently, in your phantom universe, that is your perception. If you think that is what is really important, you should hang on those thoughts and just go to the polls and just flip a coin.
However, on issues most Americans are interested in, the Democrats and Republicans are light years apart. I stand by my statement, ultra-sound Guy.
Heh. Interestingly Forbes has something close to what I said. But, he was more amusing about it.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/johntamny/2012/10/17/romney-v-obama-was-a-nauseating-draw-and-both-deserve-to-lose/1/
“Last night’s debate has to be considered a draw, albeit one in which both fighters punched themselves out in the first round. It was truly an embarrassing night for each candidate, and as the world was watching, an embarrassing night for the United States more broadly. It’s been said that “When a Democrat runs against a Democrat, a Democrat wins.” I’ll have neither.”
If this debate made Forbes blanche, what would Great Britain do to them?