Over and over again, Bob McDonnell has tried to have it both ways in this campaign. True, he wrote a thesis that could have been penned by Pat Robertson (and proceeded to vote that way in the General Assembly), but now he says he's a "moderate" -- although exactly on what issues, who the hell knows? He claims to believe discrimination against gays and lesbians is wrong, but then he says "it would be illegal" to renew executive orders by Mark Warner and Tim Kaine banning anti-gay discrimination for state jobs. Huh? And then there's this beauty: Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell said Saturday he believes the globe is warming but wouldn't fix blame on manmade carbon emissions as its cause.I'll tell ya, this guy is giving Mitt Romney a run for the money in the "I'll-say-whatever-it-takes-to-get-elected-even-if-it-contradicts-everything-I-used-to-say-and/or-believe" sweepstakes. As Deeds campaign spokesman/senior strategist Mo Elleithee put it:
[...]
When asked to clarify whether he believes that global warming is scientific fact, however, he hedged.
"Well, there's some debate that various scientists are going on in that," he said. "I think the temperature of the earth, from the science I've seen, is going up."
For the better part of a week, Bob McDonnell has had the opportunity to answer the straightforward question, "Do you believe in the science of global warming," and he still refuses. It's not a hard question.No, it's not a hard question for anyone who knows anything about climate science (or science in general). But, apparently, it's an excruciatingly difficult puzzle for "Pat Robertson's Manchurian Candidate" to figure out, especially when a good chunk of his anti-science, flat-earth "base" believes that either global warming doesn't exist, or even if it does exist that it's caused by sunspots or ocean currents or whatever cockamamie propaganda Big Oil and Big Coal today are spewing out today. Anyway, it's idiocy like this that has Virginia Democrats calling the McDonnell/Bolling/Cooch statewide ticket "the most backward, anti-science" ever. In a world in which science, knowledge and learning are the keys to our future as a nation, that alone should disqualify all three of these guys from your consideration on election day.
UPDATE: Deeds' campaign manager Joe Abbey weighs in with a statement.
Today Bob McDonnell stood with John McCain, but he sounded like Mitt Romney as he awkwardly flipped and flopped his way through questions on the science of climate change. Prominent Republicans such as John Warner, Lindsay Graham and even John McCain have said that climate change is a scientific fact. But when asked what he believed, Bob McDonnell couldn’t form a coherent answer. Either that’s because he knows that he and the rest of the Republican ticket are far outside the mainstream on this issue, or because Bob McDonnell’s real position is ‘say anything to get elected.
