Learn Some Manners, Gov. Gilmore

Former Gov. Jim Gilmore showed last week he is still mired in the negative politics of the past. And those politics, sadly, put name-calling ahead of a positive platform from which he could present his ideas for the future of Virginia and the United States.

Gilmore, who narrowly won the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Sen. John Warner, apparently has decided that a negative campaign will help him in his uphill battle against another former governor, Democrat Mark Warner.

How else could Gilmore justify the name-calling used to launch his general campaign last week? Is that the only way he thinks he can win the Senate seat? If so, he has badly misjudged the Virginia electorate.

In the space of his opening salvo that took him from Richmond to Norfolk and to Manassas, Gilmore referred to his opponent as a “piranha,” a “limousine liberal,” and a “naif.” He seems to be picking up where former Republican Sen. George Allen left off when he referred to an observer of the Jim Webb campaign as “macaca.”

It was the $1.4 billion tax increase in 2004 that Mark Warner pushed through the General Assembly with bipartisan help that drew the “piranha” label. Gilmore, who preceded Warner as governor, said the tax increase was not needed. “Mark Warner is like a hungry piranha,” said Gilmore, who pledged to oppose all tax increases. “There is just no end to his appetite for the people’s tax money.”

But Gilmore couldn’t leave it at that. Alluding to the personal fortune his opponent has earned in high technology, Gilmore called him an “elite limousine liberal who doesn’t keep his word.”

Ah, the “L” word. No campaign from anti-tax wing of the Republican Party would be complete without it.

Gilmore touted his vast experience as the head of a commission chartered by Congress to study the threat of terrorism on the U.S. homeland and suggested it put him way ahead of his opponent in terms of national security and foreign policy.

Referring to Iran as an outlaw regime that U.S. and world leaders must confront over its development of nuclear weapons, Gilmore said, “Who do you want in the U.S. Senate to do that? Somebody who understands foreign policy and has some experience with it or a naif who does not know anything about foreign policy?”

A naif? That’s Gilmore shorthand for a naive person lacking in critical ability.

So there you have it. Gilmore has come out swinging in the Virginia Senate campaign — not with a positive program of his own, but with negative slings at his opponent. Isn’t that part of the politics of the past that have turned off voters? Of course it is.

But maybe that’s what Gilmore and his advisers have decided he has to do to stay competitive in the campaign against Mark Warner, who already enjoys a huge fund-raising lead over Gilmore.

After all, Gilmore does have an uphill fight, and it’s not just against the Democrats. Two prominent former Republican legislators have broken with their party to support Warner for the Senate seat. They are former Del. Vincent Callahan of Fairfax County and former Sen. John Chichester of Northumberland County.

If former Gov. Gilmore has anything positive to contribute to the Senate campaign, he’d better get to it. The negative politics of the past could obliterate him and his hard-core followers between now and November.