Robert McDonnell Loves Jesus (Except When He Has An Election To Win)

Once upon a time there was a man named Robert F. "Bob" McDonnell who had hopes and dreams of leaving behind that boring state Attorney General job for a nice cushy gig as the shining new Republican governor of Virginia come this November's elections.

All he has to do is once again take care of that Democratic-thorn-in-his-side Creigh Deeds just like he did in the 2005 Attorney General race when he won by a whopping 323 votes. Talk about landslides!

But then the unexpected happened. One of those liberal, elitist, hoity-toity newspapers like the Washington Post started poking its nose around Mr. McDonnell and lo and behold dug up a few skeletons from the nice, God-fearing man's closet.

This pile o' bones coming in the form of a 93-page master's thesis written by a one Robert McDonnell when he was a wee 34-year-old evangelical grad student at Regent University, formerly named CBN University in honor of its founder Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network.

"The 93-page document, which is publicly available at the Regent University library, culminates with a 15-point action plan that McDonnell said the Republican Party should follow to protect American families -- a vision that he started to put into action soon after he was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates."

Oooh, visions are always fun! Especially when they involve such enlightened ideas as working women and feminists (lesbos?) being "detrimental" to the family, why government policy should favor married couples over "cohabitators, homosexuals or fornicators," and how a 1972 Supreme Court decision legalizing the use of contraception by unmarried couples is "illogical."

Sure, during his 14 years in the Virginia General Assembly, McDonnell pursued at least 10 of the policy goals he described in that research paper, like abortion restrictions, covenant marriage (which is like a normal marriage, 'cept for crazy evangelicals), redefining child abuse to "exclude parental spanking," criticizing federal tax credits for child care expenditures because they encouraged women to enter the workforce, even voting against a resolution in support of ending wage discrimination between men and women in 2001. He's just that kind of guy! Oh, and don't even get him started on the plague of homosinuality...

Which is why it's interesting to note that in his current run for governor, the now 55-year old Christian crusader and governor hopeful McDonnell makes convenient little mention of his youthful conservative manifesto from his wild days affirming Jesus Christ as his savior at Regent.

"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."

McDonnell added: "Like everybody, my views on many issues have changed as I have gotten older." What he wrote in the thesis "was simply an academic exercise and clearly does not reflect my views."

Clearly. Just like the legislation he co-sponsored opposing abortion in cases of rape or incest doesn't mean he's a dick. Or saying homosexual activity raises questions about a person's qualifications to be a judge or hold other jobs doesn't make him an asshole.

So why is God's favorite gubernatorial candidate "playing down his conservatism" as some like Delegate Robert G. Marshall contend?

"If you duck something, that tells your opponents that you think your position is a liability," said Marshall, who is still backing McDonnell. "Why else wouldn't you acknowledge it?...He doesn't have to bash people in the head with it. But he doesn't have to put it in the closet, either. There's a balance you can take."

Ha ha. Balance?? Not when it's your sins Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross and died for!