No one ever believes me...

I tell people all the time there are moderates in the Republican party. Because most the people I speak with are here in GA no one ever believes me. But the proof is in the pudding: 2 N.Va. GOP Leaders: ‘I’ve Had Enough With My Party’

Yesterday, Falls Church City Councilman David Snyder, a former mayor who's been on the City Council since 1994 and is the most prominent Republican elected official in the City, announced in a letter submitted to the News-Press (printed elsewhere in this edition) that he's disassociated with the Virginia GOP.

Snyder accented his letter with angry comments made to the News-Press in a phone interview yesterday. He said that well-publicized comments by GOP Presidential candidate John McCain's brother, Joe McCain, in Alexandria last weekend was the "final straw." Joe McCain, speaking at a rally in support of his brother's campaign, said that Northern Virginia is a "communist country."

"Such a label is deeply offensive for all of us," Snyder said in his letter. "This is yet another reminder of the neo-McCarthyism now so much a part of the political debate."

He concluded, "The Virginia Republican Party, under whose tent these comments were made, is not a party with which I wish to be associated for this and many other reasons, unless and until it returns to the principles of its once revered former leaders, such Abraham Lincoln and Dwight David Eisenhower."

Asked by the News-Press to confirm that the letter constituted an announcement of a formal disassociation, Snyder said, "Absolutely." The McCain comment "was more than the last straw," he added, noting his long-standing differences with his party on gun and equal rights issues.

The Virginia GOP has become an "outrage," he said. "In its present form, it has nothing to do with the party of my grandparents or parents."

Lots of people don't like the right wing smear machine...