CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
Aug. 31, 2009 – 10:04 p.m.
Virginia Candidate Says Some Views Have Changed Since 1989
By Greg Giroux, CQ Staff
Under heavy criticism from Democrats for the strong social conservatism detailed in a 1989 thesis, Virginia gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell said voters on Nov. 3 will be swayed by his record as a public official and not for what he called an “academic exercise.”
McDonell, the Republican nominee, said that since he wrote that academic paper as a 34-year-old Regent University graduate student, he has changed his views on divorce law, working wives and restricting access to contraception.
“Any indication that I gave in that paper that I didn’t think women should work I absolutely and fully repudiate,” McDonnell said. “That is not my position. Any statements that gave that impression are absolutely wrong.”
The thesis also said that the Supreme Court in 1972 “illogically” invalidated a law prohibiting the distribution of contraceptives to unmarried persons; as governor, McDonnell said, he would not seek to change state laws regarding the sale of contraceptives.
McDonnell also repudiated his previous support for reversing “no fault” divorce laws.
“My views as an academic graduate student in 1989 are in many respects are much different than my views as attorney general and candidate for governor 20 years later in 2009,” McDonnell said Monday in a lengthy conference call with reporters..
McDonnell was responding to criticism — lodged by the campaign of his Democratic opponent, state Sen. Creigh Deeds, and his allies in the Democratic National Committee and Democratic Governors Association — that the academic paper was really a blueprint for a strongly conservative social agenda McDonnell has been following since entering the state legislature. He was elected to the state House in 1991, two years after that paper was written.
“The fact is for 20 years, Bob McDonnell has promoted a social agenda that is outside of the mainstream,” Mo Elleithee, a senior adviser to Deeds’ campaign, said Monday.
McDonnell said that of the 105 pieces of legislation he proposed as state attorney general from January 2006 to February 2009, 92 of them became law and Deeds voted for nearly all of them. Not one of those bills had to do with abortion, said McDonnell, longstanding opponent of abortion.
“The idle rhetoric of the other side about me having a dramatic social conservative agenda that’s not good for Virginia is simply not true — it’s just not borne out in my legislative record,” McDonnell said.
In the thesis, which the Washington Post first reported on Sunday,
McDonnell also rejected any implication in his thesis that the family structure is harmed by the increased participation of women in the workforce. McDonnell said his wife has worked outside the home and that his two oldest daughters pursued and received master’s degrees with his encouragement. One of them served in the military in Iraq, he said.
McDonnell’s thesis had recommended that Republicans oppose abortion and same-sex marriage and support education vouchers.
He wrote that “every level of government should statutorily and procedurally prefer married couples over cohabitators, homosexuals, or fornicators. The cost of sin should fall on the sinner not the taxpayer.”
As for his current positions as a candidate for governor, McDonnell said, “I have great confidence that the citizens of Virginia will judge me on my 18-year record as a legislator and attorney general, and the specific plans that I’ve laid out for our future, and not on a decades-old academic paper that I wrote as a student during the Reagan era.”
Virginia and New Jersey are the only states electing governors this year
CQ Politics presently rates the Virginia governor’s race as Leans Republican.
To follow the 2009 and 2010 governors’ races, check out CQ Politics’ election map
Comments
If the guy went to a university founded by Pat Robertson, that's sufficient evidence that he is unqualified for public office. Wonder how much he studied evolution? "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
Those who believe and teach that women are second class not only to their husbands but in the eyes of the law, subserviant to their husbands (or subject even if over 18 to their fathers) should never be elected attorney general much less considered as a candidate for governor. This is not only thinking about women derived from the 1900's, but the 1800's, the 1700's, the 1500's, even the 1300's and before. McDonnell and Pat Robertson would not be happy with women's place in society until it is as low as it was in the Roman Empire or earlier!
Bob McDonnell just lost the crucial Virginia fornicator vote. See: http://notionscapital.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/gop-scholarship-loses-crucial-virginia-fornicator-vote/
No different the the Taliban. Women beware. The Public Morality Police will be reminding you that your only value is that of a mother and that, if you're not pregnant or at home taking care of all the children that God has seen fit for you to bear, then you should get back in the bedroom and serve your husband for you are the weaker vessel. You've come a long way Baby! Don't give it up now.
No one should believe that McDonnell has changed his thinking. This man is the epitome of conservative narrowmindedness that permeates the republican party. These types of personality never change, they only grow more extreme as they age and believe that their way is the only way. The people of Virginia should be very cautious of electing a man who would try and enforce unjust laws pertaining to the freedom of women everywhere.
I read the first half of the thesis and question whether he should ever have received a masters degree for this trash. His sources are weak, and writing poor. There's a run-on sentence in the first paragraph; did anyone proofread it? His sources are weak and extremely one-sided. He sources Christianity Today as an academic source? Publications from partisan issue organizations and people such as The American Family Institute, Gary Bauer, and James Dobson, the House Republican Research Committee, Conservative Digest, Time, National Review, numerous studies from Republican House committees, Religious Freedom Reporter, and NY Times Magazine? These aren't academic research publications! It's a very well-written op-ed piece or perhaps a pamphlet or short book. He shouldn't have his masters or law degrees though, and CBN University should be ashamed.
This tempest in a teapot will work out as well for Deeds as now-Justice Sotomayor's writings and speeches worked for Senate Republicans.
He sure seems like another idiot Republican. All the respectable Republicans left that party long ago. Pat Robertson's University - a school for idiots who couldn't get into a real one.
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