It appears that ultrasounds, handgun purchases and helping groups ban gays from becoming adoptive parents are costing Gov. Robert F. McDonnell his dreams of being a Republican vice presidential candidate.
Now that Mitt Romney has 655 electoral votes tied up and looks like a sure thing as far as the GOP nominee, McDonnell has fallen to the wayside. Pundits still opine about who the VP contender could be, such as Florida Sen. Marco Rubio or Buckeye politician Bob Portman. A clear favorite of the moment is Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan who is seen as the Dr. Spock of the right-wing’s intellectual set.
But where, oh where, is Bob McDonnell? He’s either off the pundits’ lists or is being increasingly dissed as being potentially too “social conservative.” In that regard, he has his fellow Republicans to thank.
In the last elections, hard right elements took over the House of Delegates and cheered on by such ultra-conservatives as Del. Bob Marshall, launched their attacks on women’s rights, gay rights and immigrant rights as well as handgun safety.
In doing do, they made Virginia a national laughing stock on programs such as Saturday Night Live that did utterly devastating skits in 2008 about Sarah Palin, the completely unprepared and nearly clueless Alaska governor who ran as John McCain’s running mate.
The sad part is that McDonnell had no direct role in this political meltdown, rather his former positions such as his notorious graduate school thesis that he tried so hard to suppress resurfaced again.
Ironically, the politician who has usurped McDonnell is Wisconsin’s Paul Ryan, who is cast as a young, dynamic and brainy “Young Gun” who was the mastermind behind the attention-getting 2011 debt ceiling debacle with Virginia’s own Eric Cantor. Such stuffy GOP kingmakers as George Will regard Ryan as a bright young thing: “Admirably, Romney has embraced Ryan’s approach to altering the ruinous trajectory of the entitlement state and forestalling that trajectory presages, a “government-centered society” (Romney’s phrase in his fine Milwaukee speech Tuesday night).
Reading the tea leaves reveals that Ryan is seen as the thought-leader who can push forward the GOP’s more serious agenda of cutting deficits and debt and changing the decade’s old role of the federal. McDonnell, who had tried so hard to remake himself as a moderate and a “jobs” government is now being seen as another pathetic nutbar, who, fairly or not, wants to humiliate women before they have a legal abortion. And, fairly or not, he’s seen, thanks to buddy Marshall, as an anti-immigrant fanatic without the multi-racial appeal of Rubio, another VP contender.
In any event, Bob’s VP days are over. And Barack Obama may actually push ahead with Virginia anyway. Real Clear Politics has him ahead of Romney 48 to 43.1, as incredible as that sounds.
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