Race card played in Virginia?

John J. Miller at NRO:

Democrat Creigh Deeds, in yesterday's Virginia gubernatorial debate: "There's a hint of racism in some of the opposition to President Obama. That is crystal clear."
Republican Bob McDonnell disagreed: "I don't see it and I don't feel it. . . . I think these are ideas that are fought over public policy."

Miller also notes this intriguing news:

Black Entertainment Television network co-founder Sheila C. Johnson, who endorsed McDonnell in July, also rejected the idea that the anger seen in town hall rallies and conservative "tea parties" is race-based.
"I don't buy it at all. We've really got to stop doing this, stop bringing this up," said Johnson, who had been a major donor to Obama, Gov. and Democratic National Committee chairman Timothy M. Kaine and other Democrats through 2008.

Smitty and I were having a Twitter conversation about this year's Virginia campaign with another conservative activist, who like Smitty lives in Northern Virginia. If McDonnell wins, it will be despite the fumbling incompetence of his campaign team, who seem determined to repeat the disastrous performance turned in by Dick Wadhams in the spectacularly mismanaged George Allen catastrophe.

"Strategists," my left butt-cheek. These stupid Republican sons of bitches never call me . . .

Adrienne is so Catholic . . .

How Catholic is she? She's wondering what Bob McDonnell is apologizing for!

Adrienne gives me credit for being the straw on her camel's back, telling her she needed to shrink the art at the top of her blog.

Meanwhile, I would argue McDonnell is blowing the election in Virginia by letting the Washington Post scare him away from a 1989 master's thesis in which he wrote "that working women and feminists had been ‘detrimental’ to the traditional family and criticized federal tax credits for child care because they made it easier for women to be employed outside the home."

And the problem with that is . . .? Man up, Bob. Own it. If you're going to run away from a perfectly defensible thesis like that, you don't have enough testosterone. I got your new slogan:

EQUALITY IS FOR UGLY LOSERS

But no Republican ever listens to me, so expect McDonnell to keep apologizing like a weakling sissy, undermining his own credibility until he becomes such a complete embarrassment to Republicans that his own wife votes against him.

UPDATE: Matthew Archbold at Creative Minority agrees:

McDonnell says that his views have changed. Maybe they have and maybe they haven't, but running from your previous views on this topic makes you a sissy. This is not a debate about the capabilities of women, but rather a debate about whether, as a whole, the society is better off for having encouraged women to enter the workforce. That, I think is a legitimate question that in no way denigrates the capabilities of women . . .
I think think that it is quite clear that as [a] whole society has been severely damaged by encouraging and ultimately forcing the large majority of women out of the home and into the workforce.

Exactly. And it is a perverse mind that would imagine that a debate about whether women should be compelled into the workforce (by economic incentives created by public policy) is a debate about whether women are capable of working.

The Bob McDonnell of 1989 was right and courageous. Of course, he doesn't want to debate this topic amid a gubernatorial campaign, but at least he ought not to appear to be apologizing for a perfectly defensible argument. Don't be a sissy, Bob.

Flog me gently with a morning star

by Smitty

Last Saturday I was at an American Legion post in Woodbridge, VA, with Bob McDonnell.

I was favorably disposed. He was speaking to an audience of veterans, and he sounded like a politician talking to veterans. The only real ovation came at the end of the speech where he promised to do his best to get the Federal government to respect the 10th Amendment.

So here is news, via Virginia Virtucon, that the left is trying to make a campaign issue out of McDonnell's 1989 thesis. This, when all of the school records of the good president are mysteriously mysterious mystery (for which inane writing Stacy may shoot me).

Why do any readers care fig #1 about the VA gubernatorial race? This and the NJ race are crucial to keeping the momentum alive going into the 2010 campaign season. Too, McDonnell is himself a veteran and may help build consensus at the State level to push through some of the badly needed reforms to combat:

• The permanent political class. Read: aristocracy
• 95% devaluation of the dollar since the Federal Reserve was created to "stabilize the value of the dollar".
• Malignant entitlement tumor growth.

No pressure, McDonnell.

Any one of those three bullet points should be causing Americans to freak out. And yet the media has chosen to focus on a 1988 thesis. Is there an overtly perverse joy in the Alinsky Rule #5 exercise of sticking it to the conservative when they were too incurious to make BHO's academic work an issue, on wonders?

Flog me gently, at a medium pace.