Julie called our attention to this piece, which reminded me of something Fred Barnes wrote last year about Illinois Republican Mark Kirk, whose suburban agenda may warrant closer scrutiny.
Get Religion’s Terry Mattingly also touches on these themes in a post about this WaPo article, which includes this priceless line about the relationship between northern Virginia and the rest of the state: "It’s as if you grafted South Carolina onto the suburbs of New Jersey."
"Suburban Republicans" are the last bastion of the old value structure...intact families, church-attendance, fiscally conservative, family-centered. Mormons have this stuff in spades, and they tend to be suburbanites. Why? Suburbs are the new incubators of the next generation...people who want children tend to be tradition-minded, and they gravitate to suburban ’nurseries’-- spacious homes, green space, good schools, like-minded neighbors, low crime, racial homogeneity (which isn’t overt bigotry, but fear of the ’other’). It’s a no-brainer.
"It’s as if you grafted South Carolina onto the suburbs of New Jersey."
HEY! As someone who lives in Virginia, I resent that comparison!! The DC Metro area is nowhere NEAR as productive and interesting as New York and its suburbs.
Though...
*snark*
All the craziness coming out of the federal government is local news to us, which partially compensates with its wonderful tragicomic entertainment value.