Vote McDonnell (Fredericksburg Star)
McDonnell for governor
Date published: 10/25/2009
THE 2009 Virginia governor’s race has been dismal. Judging from Democrat Creigh Deeds’ ads, if Bob McDonnell is elected the savvy will invest in burqas. Pick me, Mr. Deeds pleas, because my opponent is so horrible. Mr. McDonnell, meanwhile, has penciled some changes into the worn menu of half-baked GOP ideas on transportation and called them haute cuisine. Bill Howell and Tim Kaine offered a similarly exotic hodgepodge; it fell right off the fork. Once again, to quote Irving Berlin, we say it’s spinach and to hell with it.
Hearing nothing inspiring from either hopeful, the citizen must assay personal attributes. So:
Mr. McDonnell, the former attorney general and legislator, has worked harder. He has devised a detailed plan for everything short of setting out your azaleas and flossing. State Sen. Deeds has produced no such library and, on the main issue, mobility, aims to convene a bipartisan commission. For success, he would need a bipartisan legislature. He wouldn’t have it, especially after his mucky campaign.
Mr. McDonnell is articulate, certainly a virtue in leadership (recall George W. Bush’s chronic incoherence and its incurred cost in popular support). Mr. Deeds is not a confident speaker, giving the impression that he is confused by complexity or fears candor.
Also, Mr. McDonnell is more positive. He has run his share of absurd attack ads, but, unlike his rival, hasn’t made vilification a campaign theme.
Executive capacity? Mr. McDonnell not only proficiently ran the A.G.’s office, but also, after serving four years on active duty, retired as a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve. Mr. Deeds lacks this command pedigree.
More: http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2009/102009/10252009/502835
McDonnell gets the nod
By The News Virginian Staff (Waynesboro)
Published: October 25, 2009
An unfortunate son, either of Philadelphia or Richmond, will stride into Timothy M. Kaine’s shortening shadow in January and perhaps thereafter wonder who won in November. Rumblings emanating from the capital, previously and painfully accurate, are that Virginia will begin the year staring across a budget canyon of $3 billion. Hell to the chief.
For the past four months, since the June 9 Democratic primary, the campaign for governor has been focused on two veteran state political players, Robert F. McDonnell and R. Creigh Deeds. That fact appears to have been lost on the latter. The state senator from Bath County has lobbied for the top job with the stuperous ardor and predictable inefficacy of a drunken brawler. And still we ponder a question, why Mr. Deeds?
His answer is that McDonnell, the Republican who bested Deeds in 2005 for attorney general, wrote a thesis 20 years ago opining on the ills of working women, homosexuals and contraceptives. McDonnell’s answer to this is that he’s hired plenty of women and been supportive of his daughter, a platoon leader in Iraq. His views, he says, have changed on some issues, meaning, principally, he’s softened rather than altered. And McDonnell’s base says amen.
More: http://www2.newsvirginian.com/wnv/news/opinion/editorials/article/mcdonnell_gets_the_nod/47985/