There's hope for VA-05: a serious alternative to one of Congress's most dismal dullards, Virgil Goode

I'm not in a position to say that Virgil Goode (VA-05)--that's pronounced to rhyme with "booed"--is the dumbest cluck in Congress. There's too much talent in play in that competition. So let's just say that there's nobody publicly dumber. Anytime our Virgil is within range of a microphone, his mouth seems to open, and the most astonishing, and astonishingly hateful, stuff just spews out, more likely than not bigoted, xenophobic, and hate-mongering. Not to mention really, really dumb.

Remember the furor he caused over Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison choosing to be sworn in as a congressman with a Koran?

I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America and to prevent our resources from being swamped.

Yesterday Lowell of Raising Kaine reported: "We Have a Nominee Against Virgil Goode!" One of two Albemarle County Dems who had been vying for the nomination, David Shreve, dropped out of the race, leaving the field to Tom Perriello. Lowell writes:

As I have written previously, Tom Perriello is an extremely intriguing candidate who is generating a great deal of enthusiasm. Tom's progressive, faith-based approach, combined with his impressive fundraising, could very well give Virgil Goode a run for his money like he's never seen.

Since Lowell's piece appeared, I'm seeing a veritable deluge of encomia to Tom Perriello from the right people, people whose judgment I respect who know Tom and consider him, not just a high-order-of-magnitude upgrade over Virgil Goode (let's fact it, a Pet Rock would qualify for that), but an outstanding candidate in his own right.

Here's the bio of Tom that's posted on Wikipedia:

Born and raised in Albemarle County, Perriello is a product of Murray, Meriwether Lewis, Henley and Western Albemarle High School and graduated from St. Anne’s Belfield. He received both his B.A. (1996) and J.D. (2001) from Yale University. From 2002-03, Perriello was special advisor to the international prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, where he helped to prosecute warlords.[2] He has been a consultant to the International Centre for Transitional Justice in Kosovo (2003), Darfur (2005), and Afghanistan (2007) where he worked on justice-based security strategies. Perriello has also been a fellow at The Century Foundation and consultant to the National Council of Churches of Christ. He helped to launch FaithfulAmerica.org and is a co-founder of DarfurGenocide.org and Avaaz.org, an international on-line community of 1.5 million members, operating in 12 languages, dedicated to building a global response to "problems without borders," such as climate change.

Tom is currently a guest lecturer at the University of Virginia Law School, where he has won an encomium from my pal Mike Stark (whose "accountability moment" at Bill O'Reilly's house I was pleased to participate in this summer). An excited Mike (that's him on the right in the photo) describes Tom as "a candidate to feel good about," and believe me, Mike is a tough crowd.

With Howie due back from his travels momentarily, once he's had a chance to catch his breath and settle back into his beloved blogging chair, I'm sure he's going to want to take his customary closer look at VA-05.

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