Bob McDonnell, Stick to Your Guns

Actually, Melinda, I don't find Bob McDonnell's "old thoughts" on "bad women" to be that far off the mark. In fact, if I were running McDonnell's campaign for governor of Virginia, I would tell him to stop backpedaling and stand up for family values.

He just needs to make a speech clarifying the outdated language and broadening the context.

McDonnell can regain the ground he has lost in this absurd sidebar issue if he'll just quit feeding the liberal media on this non-story.

He has nothing to apologize for in the conservative positions he took in his 1989 graduate thesis on marriage and working mothers. The title of McDonnell's thesis, "The Republican Party's Vision for the Family: The Compelling Issue of the Decade," is just as relevant to today's political debate as it was 20 years ago when he wrote it.

With single-mother households at an all-time high, high school drop-out rates at alarming levels, and women continuing to struggle to balance children and work (or the societal shame for not having one of the two), McDonnell's overall premise of strengthening families to benefit children is a good one.

McDonnell has been reaching across party lines to get Democrats' votes, which he may well need, but Virginia is still mostly Republican. As Bonnie noted, McDonnell has been ahead in the polls on this one.

The massive population of Democrats in Northern Virginia has put that party on top in statewide races recently but the rest of the state is conservative, pro-gun, pro-family and pro-life, and McConnell will do well with those voters if he sticks to his values. Virginia went to Obama in 2008, but I suspect it was due to low turnout by the GOP base because of its disappointment in the Bush administration.

A Republican running statewide can win back the voters now that Obama has proven to be even more liberal than was known a year ago. Government spending this year has been totally out of control, and the government takeover of the health care system is destroying Obama's poll numbers.

Also, voters are being turned off by McDonnell's waffling on conservative values this week and appearing to pander to moderates, so it's more politically astute to stand strong for his conservative social principles. Think of Bill Clinton, who polled everything before taking a step. He's the type of politician people don't respect.

Furthermore, McDonnell is empowering the liberal media by trying to weasel out of his legitimate positions. The Washington Post on Wednesday is running two articles on the McDonnell thesis and fallout -- a story the newspaper broke -- plus a cartoon bashing him on the editorial page.

Mainstream media loves nothing more than writing about itself, so it created a story and now is covering it to the nth degree, while McDonnell feeds the frenzy by hemming and hawing.

The McDonnell campaign can easily regain its footing by giving a pro-family, conservative values speech with modern language and context. The result will be another bump up in his poll numbers and the Washington Post will have to find another Republican to bash.

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