In Virginia, could Deeds have stopped the theocratic McDonnell by branding him as "Pat Robertson's Manchurian Candidate"?

Plus: The NJ gov race goes down to the wire

Virginia gubernatorial candidates Creigh Deeds (D) and Bob
McDonnell (R, "Pat Robertson's Manchurian Candidate")
before their first campaign debate, in Roanoke last night

“There are other opportunities out there. But what I can do now is be the best attorney general I can be. If I do that, the Lord will open other doors for me.”

-- Virginia AG Bob McDonnell, in 2007, to his patron Pat Robertson, as recalled yesterday by Max Blumenthal in a Daily Beast post

by Ken

Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, and pundits gotta, well, do what they do, and in our present fraught and confused political climate, this can be dangerous. We have. as you know, precious little happening electorally this year of plausible national significance, but since those pundits have to earn their table scraps from the media moguls, this means that for better or worse the two gubernatorial races are going to be subjected to a great deal of highly cockamamie analysis.

IN NJ: CAN CORZINE PULL IT OUT?

Again as we all know, with the economies of all the states in turmoil, this is certainly not a year when any sitting governor would wish to have to face the voters. The only poor sod who has to do so is New Jersey's Jon Corzine, who has the additional -- or perhaps more basic? -- problem that by and large his state's voters don't much like him. Nevertheless, over the summer his reelection prospects have brightened considerably since I last wrote about this race, in August, thanks to a relentlessly negative campaign against Republican former U.S. attorney Chris Christie. Christie, fortunately, is a candidate born, or should I say self-invented, to be the object of a negative campaign, being a proud exemplar of the Bush-DeLay-Rove culture of political corruption. As U.S. attorney, he was the very model of the partisan hack who had nothing to fear from the Rove purge. It was hard to believe that sustained attention to his record wouldn't cause him serious poll slippage.

The wild card here is the presence of a third candidate. Yesterday the Monmouth University/Gannett New Jersey Poll, which in August had Christie up by 14 points, released its latest results, showing Corzine and Christie at 39 percent each, with independent Chris Daggett, who seems to be the beneficiary of a sizable "plague on both your houses" vote, at 14 percent. Do I have to tell you that in a race this close a third candidate polling at that level makes the whole thing up for grabs, and wholly unpredictable?

If Christie does win, he may have the distinction of being a governor already under criminal investigation as he's being inaugurated. Prospective Christie voters might want to bone up on the state's gubernatorial succession rules as they go to the polls.

MEANWHILE IN VIRGINIA . . .

With incumbent Gov. Tim Kaine term-limited out of running again (not much of a loss!), it's déjà vu all over again, with a replay of the 2005 race in which Republican Bob McDonnell defeated Democrat Creigh Deeds by 323 votes out of some 1.9 million cast. And as Max Blumenthal suggested in a Daily Beast post yesterday, if McDonnell wins, as is appearing increasingly likely, the punditocracy is all but assured of misdiagnosing what happened, which is that an ultra-right-wing candidate succeeded in masquerading as a moderate, and his opponent was too gutless or dim or just plain ill-advised to let him get away with it.

"Pat Robertson's Manchurian Candidate," Max dubbed McDonnell, describing him as a "Christian-right darling" who "is likely to become Virginia’s next governor -- and more extreme candidates could win on his coattails." If Deeds indeed goes down to defeat, it won't be, Max reports, because he was entirely ill-advised:

Last summer, after Virginia state Senator Creigh Deeds crushed his rivals in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, a veteran Democratic consultant named Lowell Feld offered the Deeds campaign some advice. Feld told me he urged Deeds to immediately launch an attack campaign painting his Republican rival, state Attorney General Bob McDonnell, as “Pat Robertson’s Manchurian Candidate.” If Deeds wavered, Feld was convinced McDonnell could make inroads in the liberal-leaning but fiercely competitive suburbs of Northern Virginia.

While many Republican candidates pander to the Christian right to win elections in evangelical-heavy states, McDonnell has done exactly the opposite in the Virginia governor’s race: He's appealing to the sensibilities of comparatively moderate Northern Virginian voters. But that’s not because he’s a moderate. In fact, McDonnell is a consummate culture warrior; a graduate of Pat Robertson’s law school, Regent University, and a personal friend of the far-right televangelist, who donated heavily to his past campaigns.

During an appearance on Robertson’s 700 Club in 2007, McDonnell said his four years at Regent “gave me the insight about what our Founders believed about government and about their view of the Constitution that I’ve been carrying with me on the job today.”

Do I have to tell you that the Deeds campaign didn't take Feld’s advice? "By the time Deeds engaged McDonnell on abortion in August -- the Republican has opposed the practice even in cases of rape and incest -- the smooth-talking, telegenic McDonnell was already scoring big with swing voters on transportation and economic issues."

Unlike many Christian-right candidates, his image is easily relatable to suburban independents. During his appearance on the 700 Club, McDonnell revealed himself as a stealth candidate who learned through Robertson’s mentoring to conceal his hard-right ideology behind a moderate veneer. “[Regent] taught me the real importance of being a Christian elected official,” he remarked. “It’s not just what you say but it’s also the style of how you say it and acting in a degree of civility . . . without compromising principle.”

According to Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, McDonnell has successfully exploited his genial image to outmaneuver Deeds in the state’s key swing districts. “Virginian independents vote on who holds a drink better, who can converse with a wide variety of people in a clever way,” Sabato told me. “So whoever passes what I call the suburban cocktail party test usually wins. And McDonnell passes with flying colors.”

“I have known Creigh for a long time," Sabato told Max, "and I like him. But he is not terribly articulate and frankly, his performance has been embarrassing. Voters make split-second decisions based on sound bites and they have reacted negatively to Deeds.”

McDonnell has even survived the embarrassment of public attention to his graduate thesis.

The candidate himself, perhaps in a moment of pride, mentioned it in passing to a Washington Post reporter, a foolish mistake that sparked her curiosity. Voters were thus exposed to an impassioned manifesto that read like a manual for implementing theocracy. In the 93-page document, McDonnell denounced working women as “detrimental for the family,” called on the government to favor married couples over “cohabitators, homosexuals, or fornicators,” and attacked a Supreme Court decision legalizing birth control for married couples. [W]hen the exercise of liberty takes the shape of pornography, drug abuse, or homosexuality,” McDonnell proclaimed, “the government must restrain, punish, and deter.”

And the bad news doesn't end there. With McDonnell and Deeds at the top of their respective tickets, there are scary prospects down the ballot.

[M]any local Democratic insiders have all but given up on [Deeds]. They worry that if he loses by more than three points, hard-right Republican candidates will dominate down-ticket races. Among the new crop of right-wing upstarts is Barbara Comstock, a conservative flack running for the House of Delegates. While in Washington, Comstock helped run Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s defense fund and served as the communications director for George W. Bush’s Department of Justice, working with Regent University graduate Monica Goodling to install political cadres as U.S. attornies throughout the department.

“Comstock is bringing tons of money in,” Feld said, “and if Deeds gets his ass kicked, she is very likely to win.”

Even more worrisome for Virginia Democrats is the prospect of Ken Cuccinelli winning the attorney general’s race. Cuccinelli is a Catholic traditionalist who has accused pro-choice advocates of “killing…the children.” He recently boasted that he is the most conservative candidate to run for statewide office in his lifetime. An outspoken ally of the Tea Party Patriots, Cuccinelli has announced he was “considering” not getting Social Security numbers for his eight children because the government program “is being used to track you.”

“If McDonnell wins big,” Sabato stated, “Cuccinelli gets in on his coattails.”

I might add that Comstock's name in particular is a red flag to my better-informed progressive friends and colleagues. Her résumé marks her as one of the sleaziest and most ruthless GOP hatchetpersons of all time.

Max concluded with the 2007 quote McDonnell-to-Pat Robertson quote at the top of this post. "Whatever the margin of victory is on November 3," Max says, "McDonnell is likely to interpret a victory as a blessing from heaven -- and set his sights on higher office."

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