"To what extent is Rep. Virgil H. Goode Jr., R-Rocky Mount, becoming the face of the Republican Party of Virginia?

Goode’s unapologetic comments about cutting off immigration from the Middle East and warning against more Muslims in the Congress capture a spirit of anti-immigrant fervor generally popular among rank-and-file Republicans.

More moderate Republicans from U.S. Sen. John W. Warner, R-Alexandria, to Rep. Thomas M. Davis III, R-Fairfax County, don’t speak for that large segment of the GOP faithful.

Goode is carrying the ball for a lot of people in the economically distressed southern half of his sprawling rural district.

Larger than the state of New Jersey, the 5th District stretches from its Jeffersonian minority in the north with a strong belief in religious freedom and tolerance to its antebellum antithesis in the fallow fields of Henry County along the North Carolina line.

There, some may have tweaked the words of Patrick Henry a bit to read: “Give us liberty and give them death.” This tweaking refers to Muslims, viewed generally as a monolithic body of extremists ready, willing and able to invade this country, take our jobs, subjugate our women and get elected to Congress, roughly in that order. Viewing all Muslims as such tends to ignore the 4 million to 6 million American Muslims who live peacefully and well among us.

Other Virginia Republican leaders are quietly tolerant or supportive of Goode, who has decided to lead where others shrink away.

The debate over Goode’s words -- and a broader debate over defending and censuring them -- caught fire the past two weeks on Virginia’s political blogs.

Half a dozen of Goode’s stronger supporters in the blogosphere tried to remind the majority of bloggers that America is at war with Islamic extremists.

In times of war, their logic goes, you don’t take chances talking with or tolerating those who threaten us.

You don’t try to reason with them. You don’t coddle them, accept their strange forms of dress or allow them into this country. Anyone who believes that there is strength in the diverse mix of religions from the Middle East, and their followers in this country, is weak and ignorant, according to a few of Goode’s staunchest blogger backers.

In the football lexicon of Virginia politics, blogger backers protect the quarterback and punch holes in the other party’s virtual or imagined party line. Reporters are straw men in this game, presumed to be both ignorant and captive to one or another’s party line.

Waldo Jaquith, a prolific Charlottesville blogger on the left side of the political spectrum, drew the line at a few graphic images one of the pro-Goode, anti-Muslim bloggers posted depicting the beheading of an American in Iraq by Islamic terrorists. He removed the offending images and the blogger from his well-read political blog aggregator.

Jaquith runs one of the few aggregators that shows every blog entry on about 170 Virginia political blogs - left, right, center or out there - offering a political commons for discussion and well-rounded reading.

Formerly known as the Virginia Political Blogs, Jaquith’s commons now appears as Waldo’s Virginia Political Blogroll, born last week after a 132-part discussion about his decision to delist the blogger who thought photos of a beheaded American added heft to his point of view.

A few right-wing blogs named after donkeys and dogs have taken themselves out of the commons, or have been tossed out, presumably to go where grass is greener and debate is leaner, or more one-sided.

For the rest of Virginia’s thriving collection of political blogs of all stripes, the commons remains a place for all to read and remark in peace and general good will.

Goode is now a football on the blog commons -- an object of scorn on the left and the name of the game for many conservatives.

With quarterback George Allen nursing a forced retirement after self-inflicted injuries, Goode is seen as the backup signal-caller.

Goode, in leading the anti-immigrant parade of thought, counsels that America must toss a wide net and keep out people from the Middle East so the numbers of those who use the Quran do not multiply to the extent that they get elected to Congress or threaten the American way of life.

In his first call, Goode went long. His team is high on his strong right arm. But, in going long, Goode apparently made his pitch look like more of a success than it was by stopping or suspending email reception on his congressional Web site right after his office reported that his contituents were "behind him."" (Bob Gibson, The Daily Progress, December 31, 2006)