From Richmond, a heartening story:

Anti-establishment GOP candidate in Virginia governor's race looks to ride Confederate nostalgia to Richmond

By Graham Moomaw, Richmond Times-Dispatch, March 29, 2017

Near the end of a recent campaign event at a seafood restaurant in Roanoke, Republican gubernatorial candidate Corey Stewart called for somebody to bring out a prop that he joked could get the group “kicked out.”

“Whoaaaaa!” a woman in the crowd blurted out as a Confederate battle flag was pulled from a pouch and unfurled in full view of the camera being used to stream video of the rally on Facebook Live.

“Folks, this is a symbol of heritage. It is not a symbol of racism. It is not a symbol of slavery,” Stewart, the chairman of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors who is running a fiery, anti-establishment campaign for governor, said at the March 18 event. “I’m proud to be here with this flag.”

Though recent Republican governors have approached Virginia’s Confederate history with caution and have at times been ensnared in controversy for stances seen as racially insensitive, Stewart is running Virginia’s most openly Confederate-friendly political campaign in recent memory, a strategy he attributes partly to the election last year of President Donald Trump. [More]

What, you may ask, does quintessential New Yorker Donald Trump have to with the Battle Flag? Not much—he's not actually a White Nationalist, or any of that, just an American patriot.

What does Donald Trump's election have to do with a Virginia Republican actually growing a pair? Everything!