Those smug Southern conservatives — the ones who argue that only “moderate” Republicans from the Northeast raise taxes — can think again. This week, Virginia’s Republican-controlled Legislature joined the state’s Democratic governor in passing what the Washington Post described yesterday as a $1.36 billion tax increase. The action will increase Virginia’s sales tax to 5% from 4.5%, and it will raise the tax on cigarettes to 30 cents a pack from two and a half cents.

We’ve watched in dismay over the past two years as a Republican mayor and a Republican-controlled state Senate have raised taxes here in New York City and New York State. Virginia’s actions still leave the Old Dominion with sales taxes and cigarette taxes far lower than those here in the Empire State. But the fact that it was Republicans who were at least partly responsible for the increases there, too, at least reminds us that we New Yorkers don’t have a monopoly on Republicanism of the tax-raising variety.

At least at the national level, in President Bush, the party has a leader who is trying to cut taxes rather than raise them. He learned from his father’s experience what the Virginia and New York Republicans apparently still don’t understand — that Republicans who raise taxes lose elections.