Can Virginia Be Fixed? |
Can Virginia Be Fixed?
If Republicans don’t act fast, Virginia will turn into Colorado, but it doesn’t have to happen that way, although it’ll be hard to undo the damage.
Arthur Schaper | April 27, 2026
Election Day 2025 was a broad disaster for Republicans. Everyone could see that.
New Jersey stayed blue, but Virginia went back to being blue at the state level, and the Virginia Democrat party took greater dominance over the Old Dominion’s state legislature.
Nationally, Republicans could not avoid the backlash in voter turnout, since the common pattern is that the party out of power rebounds in the Virginia and New Jersey elections the year after the Presidential election.
However, Democrats didn’t just rebound, they superabounded, especially in Virginia.
It didn’t have to end this way. There was hope that things could have turned around for Republicans to retake the state. After all, they scored a nice upset in 2021, in reaction to President Joe Biden’s first disastrous year in office. Republicans took back the Virginia House of Delegates, and all three major executive offices—Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Attorney General—came back to the Republicans.
Hope sprang again in the hearts of the national Republican conference. Republicans could rebuild from the Democrats’ imposed rack and ruin, couldn’t they?! For the previous eight years, Virginia had suffered under two Democrat governors, and then voters watched the General Assembly fall into Democrat hands, first in the state senate, and then the House of Delegates.
From 2019 to 2021, the Democrat party pushed through its wish list of progressive demands, including gun control, LGBT promotion, hand-outs to the public sector unions (although the Democrats could not remove right-to-work from the state constitution), and more taxes and spending. And who can forget the relentless assault on parental rights and the rampant pornography pushed in the public schools?!
Democrats gave a taste of what they wanted to do long-term for two years. Voters revolted, and Republicans took back some order, only to lose it all again in 2025.
Virginia Democrats have wasted no time in furthering their destructive agenda in the Commonwealth. This time, one can be sure that they will not rest until they turn Virginia into a forever one-party Democrat state.
Virginia Republicans—and their national peers--should have read The Blueprint: How the Democrats Won Colorado (and Why Republicans Everywhere Should Care), by Adam Schrager and Rob Witwer. The Youngkin administration and his political allies and staff would have worked much harder to ensure that their lasting reforms would have...lasted.
What is this Blueprint?
Published in 2010, the book outlines in painstaking detail how four left-wing billionaires pulled their resources and plotted a full-scale takeover of the state of Colorado. The last time that the Centennial State elected a Republican governor was 2002, but for all intents and purposes, that midwestern, middle-of-the-country rural paradise should have remained in Republican hands. George W. Bush won the state handily both times, and in 2004, he not only scored a second victory, but even New Mexico flipped red!
Republicans thought they had nothing to fear, but that same year, under the Colorado surface, Democrats flipped both chambers of the state legislature blue. Colorado was moving to the left, and Republicans didn’t pay attention, nor did they put up enough of a fight. They had squandered their political capital before the 2004 election.
The state Republicans focused on redistricting issues and other cultural power grabs, which did not resonate with voters. Then the Colorado Republican Party split in two between liberals and conservatives, and the two factions never bridged the gap.
To make matters worse, Bush was busy with Iraq, and he was pretty comfortable as leader of the GOP, having expanded majorities in Congress, breaking precedent in the 2002 elections, and then expanding his Presidential wins in 2004. His campaign team and cabinet should have paid closer attention to Colorado.
The Blueprint was doing its work.
While Bush was winning his second term, those four Colorado billionaires, including the current governor Jared Polis, pulled their resources, targeted key legislative seats, established dummy news sites, and fact-checking social media to slam the Republicans. Thinking like perceptive businessmen looking to score a political profit, they invested in the most flippable legislative seats (forgetting national politics for the time being) and began their slow but steady chokehold on the state.
From their legislative victories in 2004, the Big Four Billionaires took over the state Democrat party, installed liberal governors, pushed left-wing initiatives, and enacted a progressive agenda that conservative pushback could not hope to dislodge in one term—or even a generation.
Legalized marijuana, mail-in balloting, driver’s licenses for illegal aliens, LGBT promotion and propaganda in all levels of schools, attacks on restorative therapy, etc. Colorado has been consumed and transformed itself into the anti-constitutional state. In case anyone hasn’t noticed, Colorado has even declared war on the First Amendment and the Christian faith.
Several high-profile free speech cases have originated in the progressive bastion, including the persecution of Christian cakemaker Jack Phillips, the lawsuits against Christian website designer Lorie Smith, and the attacks on Christian counselor Kaley Chiles. They all challenged anti-First Amendment statutes and anti-Christian non-discrimination laws in the Red-to-Blue bastion of progressive madness. They won their cases, but the progressive war on common sense rages on.
And now, the Blueprint, the progressive pattern and plan, has descended upon Virginia.
With the stroke of a pen, the newly elected governor, Abigail Spanberger, undid many of the reforms and common-sense orders of the previous governor. The governor and her liberal coven in Richmond are pushing everything: higher taxes, gun control, easier penalties for repeat offenders, protection for criminals and illegal aliens instead of law-abiding citizens.
Just this month, the governor signed off on the Popular Vote compact, which will revert all the state’s electoral votes to whichever presidential candidate wins the popular vote, thus nullifying the checks and balances in the United States Constitution. On top of that, the Virginia Democrat trifecta forced a constitutionally dubious redistricting referendum on the public, with a misleading ballot statement, and it passed (albeit barely).
Democrats are making sure that there is no lasting Republican legacy in Old Virginny!
Colorado is stuck in blue hell, and Virginia has now joined them in the progressive morass. A few court decisions could help Virginia Republicans in the long run, but nothing short of an aggressive Redprint to counteract the progressive left and restore constitutional rule in these states will get the job done.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has proven that effective conservative reforms can win over the voters and transform a state from purple to red. It’s time to implement similar campaign strategies in the blue states. Start targeting the main sources of money, push back on the media spin, think wisely when it comes to campaign funding, pick winnable fights, and start flipping legislative seats back to the red column.
Can it be done in Virginia? Anything is possible. Republicans enjoyed a brief resurgence in the Commonwealth in 2021. They need to figure out what worked, build on those successes, and double down for the future.
Image created using AI.
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