Is Hanger "Republican Enough" for the 24th?

That’s the question posed by Chris Graham of the Augusta Free Press in this article.

According to the article it seems as though hanger may not be “Republican enough.”

Arin Sime, a resident of Albemarle County has announced that he will seek the nomination next spring. Sime is unsure if he will run as a Republican or as a Libertarian.

Hanger has been around long enough to read the writing on the wall. He was quoted as saying;

“There's an interesting dynamic out there. Some of the antitax groups in particular, and there are a number of different iterations of that that are not necessarily Republicans at all, but they have influence within the Republican Party, are making it almost the accepted norm to have intraparty fights. You're seeing that in Northern Virginia, for example. Down here, I think there are some individuals who might like to have an intraparty contest - but I don't know whether that will develop or not. I'd say that it's at least a possibility……With some of these groups, if you're not pure enough, they want to kick you out of the Republican Party. I certainly don't want to see that type of attitude creep into Valley politics. It's really a minority-party mentality, when you get right down to it. But we are seeing more and more of that these days."

Too add a bit of irony to the story, Steven Sisson, who lost to Hanger in 2003 as a conservative Democrat was quoted as saying, “A number of Republicans have asked me if I would consider switching parties and challenging Emmett in a primary.”

Hmmmm – does that make the Republican’s who supposedly asked Sission (a Democrat) to run “Republican enough?”