I sat down and tried to write a restrained, mature piece outlining the policy positions of one Robert F. McDonnell, Republican candidate for Governor.

Three hundred odd words later I realized I am not that guy. There is only so much I can take before I need to hit the release valve.

On the surface, McDonnell is polished, collected, and obviously very smart. You know he is not going to implode a la George “Macaca” Allen or bore you to death in the manner of Mark Early (Remember him? Yeah, didn’t think so.) He is careful to project the image of a moderate to conservative pragmatist willing to work across the aisle.

It's all a little foggy when it comes to McDonnell.

But make no mistake; he is every bit the right wing, Bible-thumping, free-marketeer one has come to expect from the Virginia GOP, only better packaged. If nothing else, Bob McDonnell is a marketing success. Unfortunately, he is also a disingenuous, “say anything to get elected” politician using more moderate views on education and the environment as cover for his extremely conservative policies on pretty much everything else. McDonnell is a Pat Robertson protégé, masquerading as anything but.

On the environment, McDonnell would appear much better than your average Republican. If one inspects his campaign website, McDonnell makes much of his plans for improving water quality in the Bay, land preservation, and expanding renewable energy resources, all laudable goals indeed. But an Oct. 17 Washington Post article on McDonnell and global warming was more than a bit troubling. Basically, McDonnell said that the world is warming and he understands the need to reduce carbon emissions, but he hedges when it comes to actually pinning the problem on human consumption of fossil fuels. So while McDonnell may not be Jim Inhofe (global warming is “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people”), he isn’t Al Gore either.

The other issue on which McDonnell attempts to temper his very conservative platform is education. The central component of his plan to transfer half a billion dollars worth of spending from education administration to the classroom is a commendable goal though a bit light on details. His plans for creating more specialized high schools focused on industry specific training and for supporting distance learning via virtual classrooms also seem like solid ideas that will help improve the competitiveness of Virginia’s future workforce. On higher education, McDonnell has plans to improve affordability, increase emphasis on science and math, and to force schools to expand, thereby increasing the number of degrees issued.

On these two issues, McDonnell comes off as reasonable, responsible, and sane. It’s when we start talking about the other issues that the Bob McDonnell Express jumps the rails.

Take for example the McDonnell position on taxation and spending. Much like his predecessors, McDonnell is an ardent supporter of cutting taxes without regard to the economic consequences thereof. You may recall how well this approach worked when Jim Gilmore damn near bankrupted the Commonwealth with his reckless car tax meddling.

Even more troubling is McDonnell’s hyper-stupid views on government spending during the most recent recession. Cribbed from the McDonnell for Governor website:

MCDONNELL, WHO IS UNOPPOSED FOR THE REPUBLICAN NOMINATION, POINTED OUT THAT UNEMPLOYMENT IS UP AND CONSUMER CONFIDENCE IS AT ITS LOWEST POINT IN 30 YEARS — NOT THE TIME, HE SAID, TO PLACE AN ADDITIONAL FINANCIAL BURDEN ON VIRGINIA FAMILIES. RATHER THAN RAISING NEW REVENUE, MCDONNELL SAID, HIS ADMINISTRATION WOULD SLASH STATE GOVERNMENT EXPENDITURES.“WE HAVE A SPENDING PROBLEM MORE THAN WE HAVE A TAXATION PROBLEM,” MCDONNELL SAID.
THE DAILY PROGRESS (DECEMBER 3, 2008)

McDonnell's best face to the camera.

One could, without the benefit of context, mistake those remarks for that magnificent economic failure Herbert Hoover as the Great Depression took hold. As any good Keynesian will tell you, when the private sector falters and consumers cannot generate enough demand to support the economy, that is precisely the right time for government to step in and fill the void. FDR demonstrated that the best way out of a severe downturn is increased government spending on large infrastructure projects and other public works. Indeed, the final nail in the Great Depression’s coffin was the industrial build up for World War II, arguably the greatest government stimulus project in human history. To put it bluntly, McDonnell is offering the same old failed trickle-down Reaganomics that got us into the current mess. As the Bush Administration so deftly displayed, ideologically driven decision making is dumb, dangerous, and irresponsible. A McDonnell administration promises more of the same. Virginia can ill afford a Gilmore/Bush doppelganger play acting as economic centrist.

On transportation, McDonnell is not any better. Indeed, his transportation funding proposals appear to be based more on fantasy than anything else, though in fairness, a plan based on fantasy is better than no plan at all (see Deeds, Creigh). By most estimates, Virginia will require $100 billion over the next 20 years to meet the Commonwealth’s transportation demands. That will require an ample, dedicated and stable funding source. McDonnell’s approach relies largely on penny-wise, pound-foolish gimmicks: tolls, accounting chicanery, and attempts to raid the general fund for road building. I think a Washington Post editorial summed the plan up well:

Much of the plan relies on wildly optimistic assumptions, brazen exaggerations, gauzy projections and far-off scenarios: budget surpluses and revenue growth that may not materialize; interstate tolls that the federal government may not approve; royalties from offshore oil and gas wells that may not be drilled; borrowing that the state may not be able to afford anytime soon.

However, there is one idea in the McDonnell transportation program–by far the biggest one in dollar terms–that has attracted more favorable notices: his contention that Virginia could raise the alluring sum of $500 million simply by privatizing the state’s hard-liquor sales. The problem is, Mr. McDonnell’s revenue estimates are invented or, worse, an intentional distortion.
One can be charitable and call this underpants gnome accounting at its finest or, more succinctly, utter bullshit. Our problems are real and getting worse. Neither candidate has a viable plan on transportation, but only one is straight up lying about it.

But it is on the social issue in which McDonnell shows his true fringe conservative colors. As Molly Ivins once said of John McCain, “conservative enough to make your teeth hurt.” Much of McDonnell’s social conservativism was revealed when his twenty-year-old master’s thesis came to light. It truly is a magnum opus of modern conservative asshattery, misogyny, and no-holds-barred bigotry. Here are but a few of the more outrageous bits.

McDonnell with women, we assume, did not read his master's thesis.

- Married couples should be favored over “cohabitators, homosexuals or fornicators”.

- Abortion should be outlawed (without an exception for rape or incest.)

- Contraception should not be legal for unmarried couples.

- Women should not be encouraged to enter the workforce.

- Need-based tax concessions are “socialist”.

- Feminism is an enemy of the traditional family.

- The conventional notion of separation of Church and State is incorrect.

Now please understand – McDonnell is entitled to his beliefs. What I have a problem with is the manner in which McDonnell has run away from his thesis much the same way he has attempted to conceal his conservatism. When asked about the document, McDonnell responded by saying, “Virginians will judge me on my 18-year record as a legislator and Attorney General and the specific plans I have laid out for our future — not on a decades-old academic paper I wrote as a student during the Reagan era and haven’t thought about in years.”

Jesus, you gotta be kidding. It is not like this is the intemperate or ill-informed writing of a 19-year-old kid from a long ago era.

This “decades old academic paper” was written in 1989 when he was 34 years old. Why not just come right out and say “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain”? The problem McDonnell has is that he is every bit as conservative as the paper suggests. The views he expressed therein are radioactive among moderates and would cost him a huge number of votes in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads.  Indeed, if he ran on this platform, he loses big, huge, no contest; which is why Bob McDonnell is working very hard present himself as the moderate he is not.

Because the real Bob McDonnell cannot and should not win.