It was Donald Trump’s beneficence – a $25,000 donation – that backed a Virginia state executive who now is turning the state “from a competitive purple state into an unwinnable blue state.”
The comment comes from Daniel Horowitz at the Conservative Review, who cited a 2009 CNN report documenting the contribution.
“No Republican can win the White House without carrying the state of Virginia. Yet, Donald Trump donated $25,000 to the very man who will turn Virginia from a competitive purple state into an unwinnable blue state,” he wrote on Tuesday.
“According to CNN, among the many liberal Democrats Trump supported throughout his career was Terry McAuliffe in his first bid for the Virginia’s governor’s mansion in 2009. We are not talking ancient history here. The frontrunner for the GOP nomination gave $25,000 to one of the sleaziest Democrats of our generation just seven years ago, a man who served as the chairman of the DNC. As late as September 2014, Trump was still rubbing shoulders with the man.”
The CNN report from 2009 said, “Donald Trump is just one of many big name donors funding Terry McAuliffe’s campaign to win the Virginia governor’s mansion this fall, according to newly released financial disclosure reports — and he isn’t even among the most generous givers.”
It is that same McAuliffe who, according to the National Review, is “a lawless governor in a party of felons.”
It’s because he recently issued an executive order that will allow hundreds of thousands of convicted felons, including murderers, to vote again. His move likely will be challenged in court.
“Terry McAuliffe was a Clinton henchman before he was governor of Virginia. He would be a Clinton henchman afterward, too, which means that he must be one during his governorship, to which end he has ordered – without legal authority – the automatic re-enfranchisement of felons stripped of their voting rights,” the report said on Tuesday.
“Virginia is a swing state, Mrs. Clinton needs it, and Governor McAuliffe is therefore determined to deliver it to her. It is difficult to say which is more woeful: McAuliffe’s cynical political calculation or the fact that it is entirely accurate. McAuliffe is here following the example of Barack Obama, another chief executive who has attempted to use particularistic powers entrusted him in a categorical rather than discrete fashion, thereby transforming exercises in executive privilege into policy changes that would normally require changes in the law. In the case of our ever-more-imperial president, the issue was illegal immigration,” the Review said.
The report continued, “McAuliffe may believe that the Commonwealth of Virginia should change its laws and automatically reinstate the civil rights (some of them, anyway) of felons who have completed their sentences and whatever probation or parole conditions were attached to them. He might even be right. But the Commonwealth of Virginia has not done that. Doing so would require a bill to be introduced in its state legislature, passed, and signed by the governor. No such thing has happened. The governor’s executive privileges including granting clemency in certain criminal cases and restoring the civil rights (some of them, anyway) of rehabilitated criminals on a case-by-case basis. The ability to restore a felon’s voting rights does not grant the governor the power to do so universally any more than his ability to pardon a convicted murderer empowers him to legalize murder. The ability to restore a felon’s voting rights does not grant the governor the power to do so universally.”
Horowitz continued, “What is so tragic and ironic is that McAuliffe just signed an executive order categorically restoring voting rights to 206,000 felons in Virginia, including convicted murderers. His action likely violated the state’s Constitution. With such a narrow window of electoral viability in Virginia, it’s almost impossible to win the state if these overwhelmingly Democrat voters are added to the high floor of Democrat support in the state. Yet, Trump was one of the earliest supporters of the man who will likely tip the presidential election to Hillary Clinton if his executive order is not countermanded.”
He warned that Trump likes to compare himself to Ronald Reagan, but while “Reagan fought for conservative values for decades prior to running for president … [Trump] has championed every left-wing cause under the sun until recently.”
