Roanoke Times Condemns GOP Extremism and Suggests McDonnell Use His Veto Power

When he ran for governor back in 2009, Bob McDonnell claimed to have recanted the extremists views set out in the thesis he wrote while a student at Pat Robertson's CBN University. He masqueraded as a moderate conservative and now he finds himself in a position where he can either prove that (i) he has truly mellowed with age or (ii) his entire 2009 campaign was a lie. With talk that he may be Mitt Romney's VP choice, McDonnell clearly has a choice to make. Does he want to position himself to be Romney's equivalent to the delusional Sarah Palin - a darling of the Christianist crowd - and frighten off moderates completely, or does he want to prove that he's learned that extremism needs to be curbed and veto the nastiest bills being passed by the GOP controlled Virginia General Assembly. The Roanoke Times is calling on McDonnell to follow the latter course. Here are highlights:

In his state of the commonwealth address, Gov. Bob McDonnell urged his fellow Republicans in the General Assembly, "Don't be arrogant. Don't overreach." They did not listen.

The Senate jumped ahead of crossover to join the House in voting for repeal of Virginia's one-handgun-per-month law. . . . . Now the only hope is a gubernatorial veto.

Lawmakers also seek to weaken women's reproductive rights. The House was poised yesterday to mandate that women pay for an ultrasound before an abortion whether or not there is a medical reason for it. The lower chamber also passed a "personhood" bill that would grant a single fertilized egg the full panoply of rights of a Virginian.

Conservative lawmakers also diligently worked to undermine public education.

Virginians who, like the governor, hoped lawmakers would "come together to make progress on the issues important to our 8 million people," are out of luck at the midway point of the session.

Will McDonnell put his own ambition which require moderation first or will he grovel and seek to appease the Christofascist extremists at The Family Foundation. I suspect that he will opt for the latter. And by doing so, if he is the VP candidate, he will likely help insure the GOP ticket is defeated in November.