Kaine Declares State of Emergency
McDonnell’s Campaign Goes Centrist
Deeds, Moran Take Different Routes in Virginia Race
Valley and Northwest Lawmakers Worry about Long Tern Impact of Stimulus Dollars
Cantor’s Fourth on Pelosi’s List
Valentine Bill To Ensure that Motorists’ Steer Wide of Emergency Vehicles Hit Road Blocks in Senate
Farm Bill Offers Millions to Help End Agricultural Pollution
Re: McDonnell Centrist?
I follow Virginia politics closely and am unaware of any credible speculation that McDonnell might have faced a “challenge from the right” for his party’s gubernatorial nomination. Who was the candidate these unnamed wingers were hoping to find to inhabit the few inches of political space between McDonnell and that place on their maps where one falls off the planet? Virgil Goode or Mike Farris perhaps, though neither of them have recent acquaintance with credibility.
As for crediting McDonnell with the “landmark package in 2007 to add $1.1 billion annually for transportation needs”, well my Great Aunt Ella used to say, “you can call a pig a horse but that doesn’t mean it’s going to win the Kentucky Derby.”
First, the landmark package never became a landmark or a package as it was so shoddily drafted that its key elements were invalidated by the Virginia Supreme Court (something an Attorney General perhaps should have warned about during the legislative process).
Second, an integral part of the funding for said package was the $1500 speeding ticket provision (available only to Virginians, out-of-state drivers were exempted) that was the brainchild of one of McDonnell’s chief House allies, Delegate Albo. The audacious McDonnell/Albo four figure speeding ticket provision earned the dubious distinction of being repealed quicker than any legislative enactment in Virginia – and that’s a record that goes back to 1619.
Finally, even if one overlooks McDonnell’s failure to provide accurate legal advice and his involvement with the ill-considered scheme to discriminate against Virginia drivers, his scrambling to create the perception of addressing Virginia’s transportation crisis cannot be said to have contributed to sound public policy or demonstrated a moderate governing philosophy. McDonnell’s machinations make more sense as political strategy: a means to satisfy many of his most generous campaign donors in his Hampton Roads base (who tend to be Main Street Republicans cognizant of the need to address the Commonwealth’s transportation disaster). That he did so without actually accomplishing anything constructive at all must be viewed as a bonus by the rightwing Gilmore-Howell-Frederick clique from whence he came and where he remains.
Moderate? Nah.