Creigh Deeds seems to have finally awakened to the need to really pound on the issue of Bob "Taliban Bob" McDonnell's extreme far right record - something I have been screaming about for months now. Yes, Deeds still needs to have solid proposals for transportation, education and a number of other pressing issues in Virginia, but he needs to convince moderates and independents that McDonnell's entire campaign depicting Taliban Bob as a moderate has been one huge carefully scripted lie. But for McDonnell's own loose lips in an interview, the infamous 1989 thesis might never have surfaced. Now that it has, Deeds must use this perfect entree to go after McDonnell. A new ad campaign appears to be headed in the right direction. In a nutshell it tracts McDonnell's legislative record with the 1989 thesis and clearly demonstrates that throughout his career, McDonnell has in fact consistently followed the outline contained in his Christian Broadcasting University thesis. Here are highlights from a Washington Post story that looks at the relevancy of McDonnell's thesis:*
Republican Robert F. McDonnell's 20-year-old master's thesis is a relevant topic for discussion in the Virginia governor's campaign because it helps shed light on his record, Democratic opponent R. Creigh Deeds said Wednesday. "The thesis explains the social agenda that has apparently driven his legislative agenda during the years," Deeds said in an interview. "If anything, this ensures people understand there are very clear differences between me and the other guy in terms of our record. Records are important."
*Deeds's campaign has been trying to keep public attention on the document, in which McDonnell wrote that working women were detrimental to the family and that federal child-care tax credits were harmful because they encouraged women to work outside the home.
*McDonnell spent the day traveling by RV to Northern Virginia, where he met with the Rappahannock Rotary Club in Fredericksburg and the editorial board of the Washington Examiner. He tried to quell talk of the thesis.
*Deeds said that as a delegate, McDonnell sponsored legislation to establish covenant marriage in Virginia four times, an idea in the thesis. He has also backed bills restricting access to abortions and voted in 2001 against a resolution that urged equal pay for men and women.
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Deeds, of course, is not the only one to recognize that McDonnell has carefully worked to implement the blue print laid out in his thesis over the years. A Daily Press column likewise notes the manner in which the thesis explains most of McDonnell's actions as a legislator and some of his behavior as attorney general:
*Bob McDonnell, the man who would be governor, is the man who just a few short years ago infamously couldn't recall if he ever violated Virginia anti-sodomy laws.I mention this not merely to be prurient, but to set the tone.
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Twenty years ago, we now know, the then-34-year- old Army veteran set out in a graduate thesis his vision for government-imposed morality to strengthen the "traditional family. "He essentially argued that government should dictate who to love, when to have sex, when to abstain, whether to use birth control, when to abort (never), and then punish those who don't obey. It's a vision so preoccupied with the sex lives of others, so unseemly in its implications, it's like Big Brother drilling a peephole into every bedroom in the country. This is a broad characterization of McDonnell's arguments, but not by much.
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As state delegate, he pushed covenant marriage bills and abortion restriction. In 2001, he voted against a resolution for equal pay for women. Shortly after that, he helped oust a Newport News judge — the first black female circuit judge in the state. The objections to her continuing as a judge were varied, but they were colored by a suggestion that she might be a lesbian. On that point, McDonnell said that anyone who violated the state's crimes-against-nature law shouldn't be a judge.That was when a cheeky Daily Press reporter asked McDonnell if he had ever violated that law — which criminalizes oral or anal sex even between husband and wife — and McDonnell replied, "Not that I can recall."Really, Bob?
*I honestly don't care about McDonnell's sex life, except to wish him a rich and happy one. The specifics are none of my business. Just as the sex lives of anyone outside his own immediate family — gay or straight, married or not — are none of his.
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Now McDonnell is busy dodging questions about his thesis and no doubt wishing it would burn up like a Sinai bush, while his opponent, Democrat Creigh Deeds, is beating it like a rented mule. Voters will have to read it and decide for themselves if McDonnell still has a prayer in this race, or if this is his macaca moment — the self-inflicted wound that dooms an election front-runner.
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