* * On November 4, we will re-elect Morgan Griffith

On November 4, good, eligible citizens of the 9th Congressional district will march dutifully to the polls where Congressman Morgan Griffith will be reelected. The outcome is as certain as the sun rising tomorrow in the east. He is an incumbent Republican in a solidly Republican district and has no Democratic opponent and no viable opponent whatsoever.
It’s frustrating.
Readers of my columns may remember a few months back when I wrote about Griffith’s plans to sue the President of the United States for unilaterally delaying the implementation of a portion of the Affordable Care Act that Griffith opposed in the first place. Supposedly, the lawsuit would rein in excessive executive power, the same type of power that every modern president has exercised. Griffith, Speaker of the House John Boehner, and their cronies were going to make sure Presidential power was restrained!
Predictably, that effort has fizzled out. Boehner failed to even file the papers. Apparently Boehner, Griffith, and the others realized that this suit would go nowhere and was a total waste of time and taxpayer money. So they moved on to other obstructionary efforts in modern history’s least productive Congress.
Griffith’s actions to waste time and taxpayer money are nothing new. For months, he’s been leading the charge to end or eviscerate the ACA. I lost count after 40 the number of efforts Congressional Republicans have put forth to defund, delay, or cripple “Obamacare,” an effort destined for failure.
Meanwhile, Congress steadfastly refuses to confirm the President’s nominee for Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, apparently due to his determined political advocacy and for his audacity in admitting what we all know, that “Guns are a health care issue.” Many Americans have been shocked to learn that in this era of the Ebola outbreak, we have nobody at the helm as Surgeon General to advise us on the risks.
More troubling is that Griffith’s list of accomplishments, at least in the traditional sense of bringing federal help to the district, is virtually non-existent. Griffith’s predecessor, Rick Boucher, was an intelligent, hard-working man whose stamp was on countless projects throughout the district, from music centers to recreational trails to Internet connections. Griffith doesn’t do these things not because he’s inactive, but because he apparently believes that the federal government shouldn’t be contributing to the well-being of communities in the district at all.
Boucher was elected for the first time way back in 1983, when being a Democrat was not so toxic in the 9th District. Nowadays, not only is the Congressman a Republican but so are all our State Delegates and Senators. Running a serious campaign for office requires an extreme commitment of time, money, and emotion (Ask me how I know.), and with the chances of defeating an incumbent in a district heavily weighted to his own party being practically nil, nobody has stepped forward.
Yes, Griffith faces an opponent in William Carr, a “conservative Christian Constitutionalist” independent from Ararat in Patrick County whose beef is that Griffith has become too moderate! A write-in candidate, Rick Mullins from Dickenson County, has also stepped forward. He has proudly proclaimed that he intends to raise no funding and hasn’t even bothered to fill in the “Issues” section of his website. These men have zero chance of winning.
Nationally, Congress’ approval ratings hover around 10% and yet Congressmen get re-elected at rates over 90%. Ever wonder why?
Griffith raised over $1,000,000 to run this campaign, largely from outside the district, in spite of his lack of opposition. The Los Angeles Times commented on his first election, “Rep. Morgan Griffith… won a long-shot bid to unseat a 14-term moderate Democrat [Rick Boucher] with help from [the Koch Brothers'] Americans for Prosperity, which marshaled conservative activists in his district. By some estimates, the advocacy group spent more than a quarter-million dollars on negative ads in the campaign.” We can feel confident the billionaire Koch Brothers are funding the current effort as well.
One of the hot topics these days locally is the bucolically named, Mountain Valley Pipeline, set to slash through Giles, Montgomery, Roanoke, Franklin, and Pittsylvania Counties. While this project will bring temporary jobs to the proposed path, once construction is completed, its permanent scar will bring nothing of value to the area. One local politician who asked not to be identified told me, “I’ve yet to speak with a single constituent who is in favor of it.” Griffith, with his proudly proclaimed energy policy of, “Drill, dig, discover, and deregulate” surely is! We get the type of representation we deserve.
As I said, it’s frustrating. It’s frustrating enough that our Congressman’s sole purpose in life is to obstruct the Administration. But it’s more frustrating that so many of our voters so blindly follow the party line that an opponent cannot be competitive.
At least our U.S. Senate vote between Mark Warner and Ed Gillespie means something".