Virginia Race Polar Opposite of Race for President
- Image from nbc12 weblog
As the race for governor in Virginia nears it’s end, a funny thing is happening. The race has taken on a tone completely antithetical to that of the Obama v McCain race for president. The similarities are striking.
In the presidential election, there was a race between an incumbent party which had been in charge for eight years. The incumbents had taken office with a surplus and left with a deficit. A big event happened which swung the pendulum heavily to the competing party during the election. The incumbent tried to win by attacking the competitor’s character and promising to follow the past leader’s policies while not following those policies. The competitor promises to change those policies, has gained a lot of grassroots support and raised more money.
This is the race for governor in Virginia as well. Republican Bob McDonnell assumes the Obama role in this race with Deeds becoming McCain. McDonnell quickly out-raised the three competing Democratic candidates before the primary and has been picking up endorsements like Obama at a hip hop concert. For example, the NRA has endorsed McDonnell, who doesn’t own a gun, over Deeds, a gun owner.
The similarities don’t end there. Virginia has had a Democratic governor for eight years now, though not the same one as there are no consecutive terms in Virginia. These governors took over with a surplus and a strong economy and never solved the two pressing problems in Virginia. There has been a deficit in the state and there are pressing highway needs that are going to become more expensive everyday. Then came the big event. President Obama began to press his health care plan to the point of attacking or dismissing anyone who doesn’t support it. This, along with all the spending that is taking place in Washington seems to have forced those who switched sides to vote for history to be concerned. And it has shown in the polls. The race, which is expected to be close, went from tight to a double digit lead for Republican McDonnell during the health care debate. The margin has since slimmed to 5 points.
In recent days Deeds has started attacking McDonnell’s character in ads. One ad, which seems to have been removed from rotation, almost comically attacked McDonnell’s conservative values by pointing them out. I could barely tell it was a Deeds commercial because it literally sounded like they were trying to either appeal to conservatives or get extreme liberals to vote. But really, when you have to appeal to your base in ads about the competition, you have a problem. The commercials attack McDonnell for being a follower of Bush, saying he will take us back. But back where? Virginia is a historically conservative state that has struggled to deal with tax and spend. And of course just as McCain did, Deeds attacks McDonnell while not explaining how he plans to both change politics and “follow along in a Tim Kaine style of leadership.”
He plans to change, and he needs the support of Obama to get those black voters who normally don’t vote to vote for him. I personally know people here who don’t plan to vote because they just don’t care about the state election, but the wouldn’t have dreamed of missing Obama’s election. Deeds needs those votes but risks losing the moderates and liberals if he aligns with Obama while he is still fighting a battle which will polarize supporters.
The election is 45 days away so one or two more rounds of Obama talking down to moderates and conservatives and tea parties in D.C. to sway northern Virginian’s away from Deeds and we’ll have our change. Our first conservative governor since the Clinton era. Who would think the coat tails of a man who was once one of the most popular presidents might actually cause a fellow liberal to lose an election he once led. Now that is the kind of “Change” that would give me hope. It, along with the tea party movement and polarized Congress assure me that the Conservative movement is far from dead. It is like a batter after a strike. It just stepped out of the batters box to gather itself to start getting hits again.
Categories: Politics
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Since 1977, every time one party has won the White House, the other party has won the election for Governor of Virginia. If history repeats itself, Bob McDonnell should be the next VA Governor.
The problem that I see though is that the Democrats decided to run a moderate vs. another strong conservative. In the Democratic Primary, the Democrats rejected former DNC chief Terry McAuliffe, who was seen as a “Hillary Clinton Democrat” and too liberal to win in Virginia.
What I have seen is a trend. Democrats nominate moderates to try to win in swing states, and Republicans continue to view moderates as not true conservatives.
If Bob McDonnell was a moderate Republican, he would coast to an easy win. But on a scale from one to ten, where one is Nancy Pelosi and ten is Pat Robertson, Bob McDonnell is a ten.
Your article is well-written, but it is not addressing the actual controversy. There are a number of conservatives who believe that the wife’s place is in the home. Bob McDonnell’s thesis was written in 1989. I remember 1989 and most women worked then. In fact, most women worked in 1979.
Had Bob McDonnell wrote that thesis in the early 1960s when the culture was dealing with a huge change in women entering the workforce, I could say that he was uncomfortable with change that he was seeing. But by 1989, that change had already happened and he wanted to move society decades into the past.
I think it’s better to look at a candidate for who the candidate really is. Can we believe that Bob McDonnell’s views have only changed on the controversial issues, and he is now just someone who only takes the strongest conservative views that people can take publicly, or should we consider that he may still hold some views that he does not wish to talk about.
Virginia will decide.
This site is like a classroom, epxect I don’t hate it. lol