RK ARCHIVE - Perriello Very Impressive In Forum Against Goode

There were no major gaffes during the debate. Goode's occasional rants against his favorite bogeymen - illegal aliens - were tame by his standards, and contained the usual amounts of untruths and distortions to whip up his core nativist supporters.

Perriello, however, clearly had the upper hand throughout the debate and was able to put Goode on the defensive for most of the hour-long Q & A, whether it was in explaining an inexplicable vote (such as opposing SCHIP expansion) or trying to defend a record that, most generously, is void of any significant legislative accomplishment on behalf of his constituents, despite Goode's having been in office a decade.

(More on the flip, including the Perriello campaign's press release on the debate, "Perriello Wins Fifth District Forum.")
I'll let the campaign have its say about the meat of the debate, but for me, personally, there were a few moments that really stuck out. In no particular order:

1. In a question about health care, Goode argued that our health care system was pretty good in comparison to many other countries.

Is that the new standard, Perriello shot back, to simply be better than other places?

That is the problem with Republican governance in a nutshell. It utterly and completely lacks any sort of inspiring vision for our country.

2. On earmarks, Virgil touted his bringing home the bacon. Tom called them "The low hanging fruit of politics," and noted that earmarks completely missed the point of addressing our economic problems in this District. An earmark is a temporary salve, at best, but it is not a replacement for job training, education and other essential forms of economic development. People here, Tom said, "don't want a hand out. They want a hand up."

3. On abortion, I thought Perriello provided an awesome answer, even though I did not agree with him. He favors Roe v. Wade, he said, although he allowed that there could be common-sense restrictions on various late-term procedures. (For the record, I don't agree. Congress has no business dictating permissible medical procedures through legislation. That is between a patient and doctor, as far as I'm concerned.)

Tom asserted that the abortion debate in this country has not accomplished much over the past generation beyond serving as a hot button issue to elect both Democrats and Republicans. We need to move past that.

He said there have been 1.2 million abortions in the U.S. over the past year, and as a matter of policy we need to move past who is pro-life and who is pro-choice toward enacting legislation that can reach a goal we all agree upon: lowering the number of abortions. This involves a variety of measures, such as funding for pre-natal care, but it also involves enacting pro-family measures that help kids and families after they come into the world.

Perriello was under no illusions that this answer would satisfy those who see life beginning at conception; he said he respects people on all sides of the issue, but that as a society we need to find common ground on how to move forward rather than simply resorting to the name-calling and extreme positions of the past that have defined this issue for a generation.

When Tom began his answer, he said asking where one stood on abortion was the "wrong question to ask." Many Goode supporters laughed, and Tom said, "That's fair." But when he got done with his answer, there was no laughter. I can't believe it was just me who was steeped in thought.

4. One last point about the debate. It was packed - SRO. It was clearly a pro-Perriello crowd, which is not surprising up here in the C'Ville area, but the sheer number of people who took the time to attend was impressive.

I've seen Tom enough to kinda tune him out when he goes to his talking points (mea culpa). Today, however, when he really engaged on an issue I saw a really intelligent, thoughtful candidate who I think would make a great congressman who can accomplish a lot for this District and for the United States.

Perriello has a positive vision of what this country can be - a vision borne from traditional Democratic principles of helping out folks less fortunate than yourself, of personal freedom and of our government being of the people, by the people and for the people, not an enemy of the people.

In Virgil, I saw a nice guy, but I also saw a tired guy who is from the past. He is of a different political era, an era of getting electing by focusing on the things that divide us, not the things that bring us together as a community; an era of pitting the powerful against the weak; and an era in which government doesn't try to help folks, but only identifies scapegoats on which people can blame their problems while politicians live the good life in Washington, DC.

We have too many challenges in this country to just keep doing the same thing and making the same mistakes over and over again. It's time for change. It's time for new leaders like Tom Perriello, and Barack Obama and Mark Warner.

I rarely do this in diaries, but folks, whether you are in this district or not, drop Tom a few pennies. He is working his butt off, and he has earned it.

Don't let their laconic demeanors fool you. These guys got into a wrestling match out in the parking lot afterwards (only kidding).

Comments

Yes, Periello was impressive (Don Wells - 8/13/2008 10:59:22 PM)

aznew says

One last point about the debate. It was packed - SRO.. the sheer number of people who took the time to attend was impressive.

Yes, SRO was literally true. The estimate which the SSV officers got afterward was 400. The Senior Center ran out of chairs, and that is why people were standing in the room. This was a crowd of unprecedented size for this biennial event.

Also, the media were out in full force. There were four or five video cameras operating in the room, and they stayed for the whole 90min. There were two television trucks in the parking lot outside, with satellite uplink dishes; I think that the SSV Forum has never had that before. The two station trucks were channels 7 and 10. I don't recognize those. Roanoke? Danville? Lynchburg?

For the record, the Periello campaign was running a video camera. I spoke to the person who was operating the equipment, because I did video work for the two Al Weed campaigns in VA-05 (2004, 2006).

I appreciate aznew's review above, because I was one of the two people who were organizing the questions for the moderator, so I heard only bits and pieces of the Q&A portion of the program.

In his closing statement, Tom Periello pointed out that Virgil Goode made a mistake some years ago when he thought that the Republicans would be the majority in the House for the forseeable future, and agreed to switch parties if they would put him on Appropriations. Now he finds himself in the minority, so this gamble is no longer paying off for the District! This is an important pragmatic point.

Last, aznew is being rather charitable when he gives this mild-mannered description:

Goode's occasional rants against his favorite bogeymen - illegal aliens - were tame by his standards, and contained the usual amounts of untruths and distortions to whip up his core nativist supporters.

Those of us who live in VA-05 are accustomed to hearing this stuff periodically, and our senses have been dulled by the repetition, but outsiders who encounter it for the first time are probably going to be astonished by the level of xenophobia, intolerance and pettiness displayed by Virgil Goode when he really gets going, as he did once or twice today. He rather proudly declared himself a political ally of Tom Tancredo, Duncan Hunter and Ron Paul, and expressed a mixture of their philosophies. Somebody should edit the video or podcasts to select some choice quotes and produce a 'best of Virgil' recording for the Net to savor.