As some political experts have put it, George Felix Allen began this campaign season evaluating his upcoming senate reelection race in Virginia as nothing more than a speed bump in the road before running for president in 2008, a Republican Southern alternative to John McCain of Arizona.  

Now the speed bump has attained the level of a ponderous mountain that appears increasingly difficult for the once confident Allen to climb.  Yes, there is that unfortunate element for Senator Allen in the form of a steady population increase in Northern Virginia.

Those well read, politically savvy suburbanite professionals commute to and from the District Columbia, where they work.  They identify in large numbers with the Democrats.

Those Northern Virginians are progressives, citizens in touch with the present.  Allen's current campaign harkens back to the pathetic nadir of Strom Thurmond and Theodore Bilbo's Dixiecrats while his campaign style appears to be blending in with that of Republicans elsewhere in the nation, scrambling around aimlessly, reminiscent of the late nineties crackup of Britain's Conservative Party.