The Next Right endorses Amit Singh for VA-08 GOP Primary

One of the things that we hope to address at The Next Right is how to integrate all the excitement from the grassroots organizations from the Presidential primary. Last week, the energy behind Mike Huckabee's campaign in South Carolina resulted in Glenn McCall's election as South Carolina Republican National Commtiteeman.

Tomorrow, the editors of The Next Right will be casting our three votes for Amit Singh in the Republican Primary in VA-08. The grassroots energy behind Singh is a combination of Ron Paul supporters and NoVA Indian-Americans.

Our endorsement of Singh focuses on several issues:

• He has a real grassroots core.
• He is dedicated to small government. This is beyond question in a Ron Paul supporter.
• His position on the Iraq war is reasonably solid. More on this below.
• While we don't think that he would be likely to win a general against Jim Moran, clearly an embarassment to Congress and Northern Virginia, we believe that he can attract activists and support for the whole GOP ticket.
• Mark Ellmore's campaign has demonstrated a desperate dishonesty in the last couple of days that we find quite disturbing.

Read on after the jump.

Singh has run a good campaign focused on solid issues. His website mentions:

"I am guided by the principles upon which our nation was founded:

• Limited Government and trusting in the American people
• Fiscal Responsibility and promoting the growth of the American economy
• Personal Freedoms and respecting the rights of the individual, the family and the people

Above all, I believe in the rule of law and respecting, defending and following the Constitution."

In addition, he has taken the Citizens Against Government Waste Earmark Pledge, the two other decent items from the Change Congress pledge (but not the public funding of elections), and supports keeping Virginia a Right-to-Work state. In addition, he supports school choice and fixing the NoVA rate of return on federal transportation dollars.

Our biggest concern with Singh was his Iraq position, not because of anything he said, but because of his association with Ron Paul. His bio goes part of the way to alleviate these concerns. From his site:

After graduation, Amit moved to Arlington to work for NASA and the Department of Defense. A few years later, he then started his own small business, which currently works with the U.S. Intelligence Community and our soldiers and marines on a daily basis. Throughout his career, Amit has personally seen the threats to our nation and has worked tirelessly to keep his country safe.

The campaign pointed us to the recent statement:

Success in Iraq requires us to address the economic and political aspects of the situation. Militarily we have been successful, but progress is not sustainable if we continue to ignore the other aspects. Congress must put pressure on the Iraqi government to spend their $25 billion surplus and take ownership of Iraq.

We believe that these statements and Singh's background are consistent with a strong position on national defense. Furthremore, Tom O'Donoghue, the 2006 VA-08 nominee and a veteran endorsed Singh, saying:

As your 2006 Republican nominee for Congress, and a veteran who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, I know we need a candidate with the national security experience to keep our country safe. I also know we need a candidate with the honesty and integrity to strengthen the Republican ballot and defeat Jim Moran.
 
That candidate - the only candidate who shares those values - is Amit Singh.  Amit is the only candidate with the ability to strengthen the Republican Party and to lead us to victory in November. He is the only candidate with real national security experience.  I am proud to support a candidate who works everyday with my colleagues deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.

We are not fully satisfied, but we recognize that Northern Virginia is not fertile territory for Republicans and running a non-traditional GOP candidate could have many  upshots. Not least among them is his support in the Indian American community, a community that Republicans performed well in prior to 2006. There is also a contrast to a pattern of racist statements by Jim Moran.

Elections are of course, a choice. Singh is imperfect, but so is Mark Ellmore. Ellmore first ran in 2006 and lost the primary to O'Donoghue. Ellmore was not impressive at the time. At best, he is a convention conservative running in a 2-1 Democratic seat. There is no reason to vote for him and his previous failures demonstrate a weak organization.

Furthermore, as O'Donoghue hints above, Ellmore has an "honesty and integrity" issue. Rick Sincere wrote here:

An otherwise low-key congressional nomination contest in Virginia’s Eighth District took an intriguing turn three days before the Republican primary, when the Washington Post reported that one of the candidates had, in an effort to discredit his opponent, made up quotations from that newspaper in a campaign flier.

This is not how GOP candidates in VA-08 should be making the Washington Post.

Therefore, we endorse Amit Singh and wish him luck tomorrow. We hope that Wednesday is the start of a new day for the Northern Virginia GOP.