Virginia GOP Family Values: Throw Your Wife Under the Bus

The criminal corruption trail of former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell and his wife Maureen seems to get more and more tawdry and night time soap opera like with each passing day of the trial.  One thing that has become abundantly clear is that to be a good Republican family, one needs to play act in public even as shrew like behavior and estrangement are the norm behind closed doors.  Or at least that is the take away if one believes Bob McDonnell - who opposes gay marriage despite the sanctity free nature of his own - and his defense team.  Oh, and let's not forget the greed and avarice that seems to have had free rein.  Here are highlights from the New York Times on the tawdry reality  of  Virginia GOP family values in action:

Defense lawyers have portrayed the couple as incapable of conspiring with Mr. Williams, who gave the couple and a family business $120,000 in low-interest loans, paid for much of their daughter’s wedding, took Ms. McDonnell on lavish spending sprees, bought a Rolex for the governor, footed the bill for golf outings and made his Ferrari available to them. 

The defense painted Ms. McDonnell as a vitamin-obsessed “nutbag” smitten with Mr. Williams, and Mr. McDonnell, once considered a contender for the G.O.P. presidential nomination, as at once a naïve Boy Scout and an accomplished governor too busy to notice Mr. Williams’s entreaties.

The initial shot the former governor took at his wife was a teaser, devised by the defense lawyer Henry Asbill at the very beginning of his client’s testimony. Mr. Asbill then turned to Mr. McDonnell’s career and his interactions with Mr. Williams.

Even in those early biographical sections, client and lawyer mustered a few veiled shots at Ms. McDonnell. The former governor spoke at length of the difficult times the family faced when he quit his business job and went to law school. He rejoined active duty in the Army Reserve, helped distribute newspapers in Virginia Beach and sold toys with his wife, who pitched in by waiting tables.

After he graduated, Ms. McDonnell “was a little surprised, maybe disappointed, when she looked at the salary” her husband would be making as a local prosecutor, which was lower than his paycheck four years before.

Mr. McDonnell’s main task on Wednesday appeared to be showing that for all his largess, Mr. Williams received no quo for his quid. The Richmond-based insurer Genworth Financial won a $7 million tax savings from the McDonnell administration. A local brewery here got a bill-signing ceremony. The governor pulled out all the stops to help an Israeli firm partner with Pepsi-Cola to make Sabra hummus in Virginia. A DuPont battery facility in Chesterfield County got a visit from the governor.

In contrast, Mr. McDonnell said, Mr. Williams’s Star Scientific company got no grants, no earmarks in the Virginia budget, no economic development assistance, no governor’s visit — just one event in the governor’s mansion, one of “300 or so” where 25,000 people were invited.

But the fireworks still lie with the marriage, which has looked picture-perfect in public but is being portrayed as icy, roiled by a mercurial wife who loathed her role as first lady.

A management consultant hired in 2011 to calm the first lady’s ready-to-revolt staff testified Wednesday that he had discussed reducing her time at the governor’s mansion, limiting her public speaking and getting her therapy, possibly for depression.

Indeed, only in this soap-operatic trial would evidence of affection between the McDonnells be seen as a victory for the prosecution. Prosecutors on Wednesday tried to undermine the defense’s contention that the McDonnells’ marriage had become a sham, highlighting an email exchange between Ms. McDonnell and Mr. Burke in January 2012 as they hashed endlessly over getting her through a coming public event.

Mr. Burke testified that he was brought in to calm “an undue amount of chaos” in the first lady’s suite. He spoke of shouting matches over telephones while trying to stop Ms. McDonnell’s entire staff from quitting, a private appeal to the governor to get his wife into therapy, and hours coaching Ms. McDonnell through speaking engagements and public appearances.

The McDonnells quickly exchanged high-interest credit card debt for Mr. Williams’s lending terms: 2 percent interest to be paid after three years, with no monthly payments necessary.

Sadly, I suspect that many of the marriages of the "godly Christian" crowd are shams and psychodramas like that depicted by the defense team.  The irony is that, if this is true, having gays legally marry could only help the status of marriage across the Commonwealth of Virginia.  Think about it, what kind of marriage can a hate filled, perpetually lying, frigid bitch like Victoria Cobb have?