Bob McDonnell, the Republican nominee for Governor of Virginia, has been working hard lately to walk back from his 1989 thesis, in which the then-34-year-old McDonnell laid out a plan for a hard religious-right agenda. But does the walk-back have a price of its own?
The Washington Post has an interesting quote from Victoria Cobb, president of the Virginia-based Family Foundation. “Bob McDonnell got where he is because pro-family Virginians have seen him as a champion for their cause,” Cobb said. “If he expects to motivate those same voters, they need to continue to see him as that champion.”
So if McDonnell works too hard to prove that he’s not a right-wing theocrat, maybe that could actually depress enthusiasm among the people who genuinely like that sort of thing.
