OPINION:
Since former U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger won Virginia’s governorship on Nov. 4, she has been touted as one of the faces of the Democratic Party’s future. So it came as little surprise when the party pooh-bahs chose her to respond to the Republican president’s State of the Union address Tuesday night.
Proving that you can indeed fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, Ms. Spanberger campaigned for governor as a sensible Democrat. She even claimed to be among the most bipartisan members of Congress during her three terms representing Virginia’s 7th Congressional District.
“I’m committed to working across the aisle to deliver on the issues that matter to Virginians. Hyperpartisanship must not get in the way of finding common ground to get things done,” Ms. Spanberger proclaimed in a 2024 Facebook post.
That was then, and this is now.
Hyperpartisanship was the order of the evening in her 13-minute speech, delivered from the House of Burgesses chambers in historic Williamsburg. “Is the president working to make life more affordable for you and your family?” she asked rhetorically. “We all know the answer is no.”
That would certainly be news to anyone who has pumped gas since President Trump returned to the White House 13 months ago. The price of gasoline has plunged by as much as half since he reversed his predecessor’s costly anti-energy policies.
Nor did she credit Mr. Trump for bringing down the inflation rate from a nearly 50-year high under President Biden to a bit over 2% today.
Then, in stark contrast with Mr. Trump’s call for lawmakers to stand if they agreed that “the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens,” Ms. Spanberger went full demagogue in echoing the open-borders philosophy of her party on the issue of illegal immigration:
“Our president has sent poorly trained federal agents into our cities, where they have arrested and detained American citizens and people who aspire to be Americans, and they have done it without a warrant.
“They have ripped nursing mothers away from their babies, they have sent children — a little boy in a blue bunny hat — to far-off detention centers, and they have killed American citizens on our streets.”
That’s quite a whopper. As the acting head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Todd Lyons, explained in congressional testimony, “The men and women of ICE took care of him when his father abandoned him and ran from law enforcement.”
Her lie about what she and her party, which controls both houses of the state General Assembly, are doing in Virginia was just as shameless.
“Here in Virginia, I am working with our state legislature to lower costs and make the commonwealth more affordable,” she said, conveniently omitting any mention of the 50-odd tax increases that have been proposed by Democratic state lawmakers.
Across-the-board tax hikes such as those Democrats are ramming through the General Assembly will cut into the paychecks of everyone who lives in the Old Dominion. Mr. Trump delivered relief for taxpayers through his One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
If there is one good thing about Ms. Spanberger’s unmasking Tuesday, it is that Virginians are no longer under any illusions about what they can expect from her over the next four years.
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