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The Washington Times

November 10, 2005 Thursday

Say 'adios' to consistent logic, 'hola' to Kaine

By Tom Knott, THE WASHINGTON TIMES


It is a time to celebrate for the tax-and-spend and illegal-alien supporters of Virginia after the gubernatorial election of Democrat Timothy M. Kaine.

The self-styled Minutemen of Herndon videotaping the contractors who pick up the day laborers loitering next to the 7-Eleven hard by the Dulles Toll Road might as well shut down their operations and go home to bone up on their Spanish.

Virginia has placed its welcome mat out to Latin America: Give us your tired, your poor, your $10-an-hour illegal aliens.

We will provide them with day centers that come with television sets tuned to Spanish-language channels, along with Spanish-language newspapers, language-neutral urinals, Spanish-speaking counselors and whatever else is necessary to make their illegal stay a pleasant one.

To his everlasting credit, Virginia's governor-elect is incredibly sympathetic to the plight of illegal aliens, which reflects his sophistication, enlightenment and grasp of the nuances.

He is a very deep-thinking politician, and enough voters recognized this fundamental quality about him to hand the state's leadership over to him instead of the Neanderthal-like Jerry W. Kilgore, who pledged to give state troopers the authority to detain illegal aliens and go from there.

That won't happen now, thankfully enough, and Northern Virginians will be able to continue to exploit this cheap labor pool of nannies, maids, landscapers and construction workers.

We only can hope that Mr. Kaine stays true to his campaign promises and his political positions of the past, as he develops further social cures with the raising of taxes.

We also hope he makes good on his promise to support those communities endeavoring to provide a commode to each of the illegal aliens with persistent bladder-control problems.

Virginia's voters have spoken, and they deserve the contradictions of Mr. Kaine, a Catholic who opposes the death penalty. He has a faith-based objection to the state eliminating the most heinous in our midst.

Yet, Catholic or not, he is not opposed to the killing of fetuses.

"We don't need to criminalize the health care decisions of women and their doctors," he said last summer in response to the issue of abortion ever being turned back to the states by the U.S. Supreme Court.

His is a naturally inconsistent logic, although politically prudent: Spare a killer; kill an innocent.

The inconsistency all too often cuts across the political aisle, although in a more agreeable fashion: Kill a killer; spare an innocent.

As governor, Mr. Kaine insists he will follow the rule of state law with the condemned. He does not say if he would join the death-penalty foes who hold candlelit vigils in honor of the depraved.

Virginia harbors something of a split political personality because of the high number of limousine liberals living in Northern Virginia.

These D.C. suburbanites have little in common with their distant cousins in the Southwest, Southeast and central sections of the state.

But their blue-state numbers often rule in the off-presidential-election years of light voter turnout.

Mr. Kaine appealed to those in the outer suburbs with a hopelessly empty proposal to restrict development, a position demanding a miracle or magic, given the crush of humanity, illegal or otherwise, descending on the exurbs en masse.

As Mr. Kaine seeks to improve the state's education system, health care and public safety, he really should revisit the seemingly intractable personal-property tax on automobiles that remains in a fractured state.

Mr. Kaine should make that special tax whole again, if only to provide all Virginians with a more equitable and brighter future.

In fact, he should double the tax on all owners of an SUV, the gas-guzzling vehicle that leaves the climate-obsessed Al Gore in a cold sweat.

As a politician of vision, Mr. Kaine might as well make the learning of Spanish mandatory in the state's secondary schools. Virginians can do better. They must do better.

Yes.

Si.