Opinion of George Allen

[gorkay]

George Allen looks as if he were made of plastic. And, in a way, he is.

He was one of the original one-issue campaigners... he got elected governor of VA on the issue of abolishing parole, which is pretty stupid in the first place, but it got him elected. Plus, his Democratic opponent ran a horrible campaign. He got elected to the Senate mainly because of Chuck Robb's sex scandal. Since being elected, he's done absolutely nothing... a Republican rubber stamp without an original thought, or too many thoughts at all, in his head. His re-election campaign was not only one of the meanest-spirited I've ever seen, it was totally ineffective. His attempt to label Webb as a "deviant" because he wrote some novels with sex scenes in them was one of the gravest insults to the intelligence that a political candidate has ever perpetrated. To top it all off, he's going out with as much a lack of grace and class as he came in, by refusing to concede a race he has clearly lost.

[gorkay]

When he made his concession speech today, and said "First I want to thank God," I thought "thank God that your sorry behind will soon be out of office."
The fact that he conceded without calling for a recount tells me that he's angling for a future run for something... Senator in '08 if John Warner retires or Governor in '09. Maybe he figures that since Mark Warner can't run for both of them, he has a chance in one of them.

[gorkay]

All the post-mortems on Allen's career mention his role in putting the Standards of Learning tests in Virginia public schools. I can't think of a worse indictment of his so-called "leadership." The SOLs have been a disaster, and as bad a case of the "social engineering" that conservatives always complain about liberals doing as any. They've put the schools back to the days of rote memorization and drills, chased good teachers into retirement and other jobs, and kept good people out of the teaching profession. A total abomination, and a prime example of what happens when you let blind ideology shape policy.