Virginia Smith and Donald Trump

January, 2021

Lincoln – Two Nebraskans with long experience in Washington have reacted in print to the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.  They are former Washington-based reporters for the Omaha World-Herald, Randy Moody and Mary Kay Quinlan. 

Mary Kay Quinlan went on to be leader of the National Press Club and associate dean of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln school of journalism.   

She looked back at former Nebraska lawmakers and how they might have reacted to Donald Trump taking over the Republican party and inciting the insurrectionists.  She doubted that some of them, especially the third district's Virginia Smith, "would even recognize a party whose voters have fallen in thrall to an unprincipled, uncouth, failed businessman turned 'reality' TV star whose years of lies resulted in last week’s storming of the Capitol."

She goes on to write, "Regrettably, the voters of Nebraska’s 3rd Congressional District, who overwhelmingly reelected Mrs. Smith for nearly two decades, are the same voters who overwhelmingly sought to return to office the man whose supporters charitably could be considered would-be performance artists."

The former OWH reporter further laments that "few have noted that it’s voters who put people in office. Voters in Nebraska and across the nation who sought the president’s reelection must bear some responsibility for the logical outcome of their actions at the ballot box."

Much there to unpack.  I spent several years in Washington at many of the same venues as Mary Kay Quinlan, amid the same Nebraska representatives.  I agree with her about today's Nebraska voters, but I see more of a direct line than she does between Virginia Smith and Donald Trump.

Virginia Smith, in my recollection, indulged in the same kind of fabulism that characterized the Trump era.  In 1981, she did not push back in any way to the notion that a huge tax cut would balance the federal budget and have more left over to increase defense spending.  Even David Stockman, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, confessed that no one really believed it.  After Congress enacted the program, the country went into steep recession and Congress reversed much of it in 1982, after which the country slowly recovered, albeit with a greatly increased national debt.    

But many of her Nebraska constituents believed it, just as they believe today that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.  The direct political heirs of Virginia Smith are Nebraska lawmakers Deb Fischer and Adrian Smith.  I think they know that Trump did not win the election, but are not up to saying so, just as Virginia Smith was not up to telling her constituents the truth about magical economics forty years ago.  Fabulism is alive and well in Nebraska, most strongly in the third district.    

Virginia Smith's papers are at UNL.  Now would be a good time to look at them to see what hints they provide as to whether she would or would not "even recognize" the party of Donald Trump.  Many of today's Nebraska voters doubtless think she is of one piece with them.