Your Turn Letters to the Editor

Post-election questions

Jerry Kilgore must have been absent on the day in second grade when they taught that name calling gets you nowhere. He spent a large chunk of his money on negative, sensationalistic ads. If delivered with taste, the ads may have brought some needed light to dark issues, but taste was not a part of Kilgore’s ad campaign.

If all a voter did was watch television to get their information for voting (which is not how it should be done, but sadly it is done in large part) then they are probably already on the interstate headed out of Virginia forever. Apparently, now that Tim Kaine is Governor, all the people on death row have had their sentences lessened and are tying up all the lawyers and courts so that the Virginia government and criminals can work together to file frivolous lawsuits all day.

A question that Jerry Kilgore’s campaign team should seriously be asking itself right now is, “Why didn’t we stick to the issues?” The disagreements between Kaine and Kilgore on policy are so huge and obvious that they would have provided more than enough material to run a campaign.

In most elections, the big issues are side stepped, and the candidates don’t come out and say exactly where they stand on the issues.

Not in this election, though, as Kilgore and Kaine disagree often. They don’t disagree on small boring issues, either – they butt heads on issues that grab attention, issues that people aren’t used to hearing definitive answers to. Gay marriage, gun control, abortion, education and taxes are all hot very touchy and passionate topics on which the two blatantly disagree.

If Kilgore would have gotten out to the larger public his stance on these hotbed issues by way of TV, then who knows, maybe people would have seen him for his policy rather than his finger-pointing. And maybe he could have won.

When it comes down to it, there is name calling in every campaign, and what we must realize is that neither of the candidates actually wants to burn babies or steal from the poor. For the most part they all truly want what’s best for their town, state and country.

On the other hand, we should almost hope for an evil and destructive person to become a leader, though, right? That, in turn, allows us to exercise our greatest right as a democracy – revolution and regime change.

– Eric Peters