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Raise your hand if you aren’t the only one who thinks it’s a bit ironic — perhaps hypocritical — of Governor Tim Kaine to slam House Republicans and Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell for their opposition to “federal stimulus” money for increased unemployment insurance for laid off part-time workers, when the Kaine administration is the last — that’s last — as in number 50 — state to apply for federal transportation funding (see Washington Post here).

After all, here’s the man who broke his campaign promise not to propose a tax increase and since has tried to jam two at us for the purported purpose of improving transportation. Even called a special session and had his PAC target certain House Republicans. But, here is the federal money his boss, President Obama, has made available, and he hasn’t moved on it.

I suppose this makes Governor Kaine as much anti-transportation as he claims Republicans are anti-job creation. After all, he and his colleagues at the Democrat Governors Association poured millions of dollars into negative television ads against McDonnell under the premise that refusing additional (and budget costly) unemployment insurance is anti-jobs. Never mind that government deficits and higher taxes for this program are anti-jobs, perhaps the one thing in the “stimulus” bill that might create some is transportation construction.

And the first (to scream) will be last (in line). Maybe it is getting too difficult for the Mr. Kaine to serve both as governor and DNC chair.

It was interesting to see Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell announce the formation of a Virginians For McDonnell group yesterday (see Richmond Times-Dispatch). In the old days, candidates from each party, especially the Republicans, used such umbrella groups as organs to attract, gain donations from, and put to grassroots work conservative Democrats who were dissatisfied with their liberal Dem brothers, and independents who had left the party but couldn’t quite call themselves Republicans. The Byrd organization comes to mind.

Now, these groups are intended to burnish one’s “moderate” image and curry favor with certain power circles. This group’s coming out party didn’t disappoint and featured numerous former liberal Republicans who have either bolted the party or made high-profile endorsements of Democrats in recent elections, as well as some independents, a former Mark Warner cabinet member and a former Democrat delegate. (Read the well-regarded Dr. Bob Hollsworth’s take at his blog, Virginia Tomorrow.)

While reaching out to the center by advocating the superiority of conservative principles — limited government, low taxation, free-market capitalism, defense of life and the unborn, traditional marriage, parental rights, rule of law, education choice and reform, and the like — is exactly what candidates should do, conservative activists get nervous when conservative candidates are seen pandering to “moderates” and thus water down the message and alienate those who should be their biggest supporters. Ask President McCain how well that strategy works.

But what caught my attention was this McDonnell remark:

“To me, it is a recognition that we need to rebuild the Reagan coalition,” he said. “Ronald Reagan was able to get social and economic conservatives to support him, and he was able to reach out to so-called ‘Reagan Democrats’ and bring them on board around a good, solid fiscal conservative message.”

Actually, Ronald Reagan’s social conservatism is what rung true to many ethnic, Catholic, blue-collar and even Southern born-again Christian Democrats. Their upbringing and faith told them voting reflexively for liberals, because they were raised in Democrat households, was counter intuitive given the embrace of moral relativism by the liberal movement and the cultural decay that ideology presided over — and that it no longer was acceptable.

All of this, coincidentally, comes on the heals of another Gallup Poll that shows conservatism gaining. Last month, it was that a majority of Americans consider themselves pro-life. Now, Gallup shows that Americans, by almost double, consider themselves conservative rather than liberal (40 percent to 21 percent, while 35 percent say they are in the middle). Although it’s always dangerous to assume, one would think in Virginia, the percentage of conservatives is higher, liberals less. Not coincidental, is the fact that the culture and values are under the largest assault in decades (same-sex marriage, for example).

So, if by “reaching out” McDonnell has no problem blurring lines on key issues, he, like McCain, will be on the receiving end of a mighty blowback of voters desperate for someone to reflect their values. Just yesterday, the Washington Times took McDonnell to task for lacking a major tax cut proposal, as have some conservative bloggers already for a lack of big idea (see Tertium Quids and another Dr. Hollsworth piece here). But, if he’s bold, as was Ronald Reagan, and unapologetically campaigns on the tried and true principles that most voters instinctively gravitate to, he will find them enthusiastically receptive to his message.

You hear sports commentators talk about it all the time, although referees deny it: The Make Up Call. When a ref thinks he missed a foul or made a bad call, he will even it up later in the game on an unsuspecting player on the opposite team. Once, in a rare moment of candor, when I coached travel soccer, a ref told me as I complained about a bad call he made against my team: “You got a call down there, we’re making it up here!” Nevermind that he made the right call earlier.

Thus, President Barack Obama’s reaction today to the homosexual lobby’s outcry over his decision to defend the Defense of Marriage Act in federal lawsuit (see yesterday’s post): He’s going to grant the extension of employee benefits to ”partners” of homosexual federal workers. However, this is pyrrhic at best to many homosexual activists and may have steamed them off at the POTUS plenty more, as Ben Smith reports at The Politico. You see, while it at first the Mainstream Media reported it as a great win for the homosexual lobby, the fact is that DOMA prohibits the extension of health insurance and retirement benefits to same-sex partners. There’s that DOMA, again, which the president is defending. According to an update on Smith’s post at The Politico:

“Are they kidding us? Domestic Partnership benefits WITHOUT health insurance because of DOMA? What kind of reality do they live in?” gay fundraiser and activist David Mixner emailed me this morning. “It is like rubbing salt in the wound. I am glad that some barriers will be lifted for Federal Employees but what is the most important benefit needed….health insurance! Good god.”   

The anger isn’t limited to e-mails to bloggers, either. Prominent homosexual lobbyists are boycotting a big time fundraiser by Vice President Joe Biden, as Jake Tapper of ABC News reports on his Political Punch blog (here).

Also, see the Obama “Fraud” and “Fail” posters in the photo at this Politico post (here). In the end, this make up call is about as worthy as one in an athletic contest, which is to say it is not worthy at all. One doesn’t make up an alleged grievance by intentionally harming an innocent party, especially when your original stand is just. As we noted yesterday, surprising as it is, the Obama administration simply is defending the Constitutional powers of the legislative branch, as well as the several states. Whatever his reasons, cynical or otherwise, it is the correct call and requires no make up.

All this proves a point: When the most liberal, “progressive” president in history isn’t moving on the homosexual agenda at the pace its advocates want, how mainstream is their movement? 

For some reason, former Governor Jim Gilmore’s administration of Virginia’s finances remains a preoccupation among Virginia’s liberals. More than 10 years later, they can’t stop whining about the car tax cut and continue to fabricate its supposed harm to Virginia’s fiscal health.

Recently, the Washington Post went out of its way to hammer at the former governor again for his tax cut in its endorsement of Jody Wagner for lieutenant governor in the recent Democrat primary. It called the largest tax cut in Virginia history “risky fiscal policy.” (Funny how liberals think keeping more of your earned income is “risky” while they laud as responsible tax increases, which stifle economic activity.)

The former governor fired back in a letter to the Post that he added $1 billion to the Rainy Day Fund (which Governor Tim Kaine has all but depleted thanks in large part to the faulty revenue projections of Ms. Wagner when she was finance secretary); that since he’s left office, under his two successors, state spending has increased from $51 billion to $77 billion; and that under Ms. Wagner and Governor Kaine we have seen a deficit of $3.7 billion, while he left his budget in balance. He quotes Business Week as listing Virginia now as one of “twenty states that can’t pay for themselves.”

Then Governor Gilmore caps some compelling statistics with a stinging question:

In contrast, my administration delivered a car tax cut, with bipartisan support, that has helped millions of Virginians. But this tax cut has been a burr under the saddle of liberals for 11 years.

It’s time for liberals to put up or shut up. Why don’t they just reimpose the car tax if they truly believe it was “risky fiscal policy”?

Great question. If the car tax cut has been such a disaster, we welcome liberal candidates for any office anywhere in the Commonwealth to make its reinstatement a top priority.