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This morning on Richmond’s Morning News With Jimmy Barrett on WRVA-AM, Family Foundation Vice-President for Policy and Communications Chris Freund was interviewed about the legal opinion issued by Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and the reaction to it. It wasn’t a real debate, but immediately prior to Chris’ appearance, Barrett’s guest was Claire Guthrie Gastanaga, the lead lobbyist for Equality Virginia. Notice that she avoided Barrett’s first question and, shall we say, gave an intriguing spin on the entire matter at hand. In fact, you can detect the skepticism in Barrett’s voice and questions. Chris sets the record straight his turn at bat.

Click here to listen to the back-to-back interviews (9:24).

House Majority Whip and Appropriations Committee Vice Chairman Delegate Kirk Cox (R-66, Colonial Heights) appeared on Richmond’s Morning News with Jimmy Barrett this morning on WRVA-AM, with the Lee Brothers substituting for Barrett. Most of their questions focused on the budget and some of the myths promulgated by the left and certain media types.

Delegate Cox was refreshingly candid and said he was tired of the whine coming from certain local government officials, especially when it comes to education funding. Thus, the Stat of the Day:

In Virginia, since 2000, while student enrollment in Virginia K-12 public schools has grown by 7.2 percent, state spending on same has increased 60 percent!

Okay. You know me by now. I can’t stop there. Get this:

Two-thirds of the Virginia budget goes to K-12 public education and health and human services.

So much for the liberal charge about those mean conservatives in the House of Delegates who cut, cut, cut education whenever they can. The fact that Virginia has cut public education spending is a myth, plain and simple. There’s about as much truth to the fact that public education funding has been cut as there was that we were in a deficit when Mark Warner shoved through the largest tax increase in Virginia history.

But the education establishment (the educrats) use every opportunity to kick, scream and cry about a lack of funding to block any type of reform possible. Worse, they try to block discussion of reform with General Assembly lobbyists paid for by taxpayers and teachers’ dues. Thus, Virginia’s worst-in-the-country-charter-school-law, which has been on the books more than a decade and resulted in a meager three charter schools (with a fourth on the way).

Now, after eight years, there’s a new team in charge. Hopefully, that will be the catalyst for the truth finally to get equal billing with the myths — and for something positive to get done.

Click Here To Listen To The Entire Interview With Delegate Kirk Cox (5:45)

About an hour ago, Governor Tim Kaine created quite the stir on his last Ask The Governor show on WRVA radio in Richmond. When host Jimmy Barrett mentioned that this was, in fact, listeners’ last chance to ask Governor Kaine a question, the governor rejoined that it wasn’t so.

“They can come to the Christmas Tree lighting and open house tonight.”

Barrett did what had to be a double take, noting that First Lady Anne Holton called it a “holiday tree.”

“No, it’s a Christmas Tree,” the governor stated emphatically, which must have puzzled Barrett and his listeners since the PC crowd at the governor’s mansion has called it a “holiday tree” the previous three years. Barrett rejoined that the governor needs to set his wife straight. (Sure enough, the governor’s schedule gives conflicting statements, calling it a “Capitol Tree” and “Christmas Tree” in the same line.)

So, as his term draws to a close, Governor Kaine tries to give away benefits to “domestic partners” one day and the next he offers a moment of clarity. We’ll take what we can get . . . with 44 days left.

Over the last 24 hours two more polls were released, one by Democrat pollsters Public Policy Polling and the other by SurveyUSA for Roanoke television station WDBJ. Neither typically are considered top tier polls — not necessarily in the same league as Mason-Dixon and Rasmussen. But they have shown interesting, sometimes contradictory, results this campaign season. But now both show Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell with commanding double digit leads (14 and 19 points, respectively). Each also has the other two Republican candidates, Lt. Governor Bill Bolling and attorney general nominee Senator Ken Cuccinelli (Fairfax), up by healthy double digit margins. Does the fact that these two newer polls to Virginia politics both show the same trend (though different margins) verify a trend?

One who pretty much said so today was U.Va. political soothsayer Larry Sabato. On WRVA radio’s Richmond’s Morning News With Jimmy Barrett, he wouldn’t go that far — yet. But he crept up to to the line, which, for Dr. Sabato, is saying a great deal. He said he would release his Crystal Ball’s predictions next week.

Listen to Larry Sabato’s interview (6:55) with Jimmy Barrett by clicking here.

Here is the analysis (including methodology) and internal numbers from the two polls, including from the polling organizations themselves:

Public Policy Polling 

McDonnell starting to pull away (PublicPolicyPolling.com)

Another Poll Suggests McDonnell Pulling Away From Deeds (CQPolitics Blog)

McDonnell up 12 pts. in new poll (Norfolk Virginian-Pilot)

Both

McDonnell Opens Double-Digit Lead Over Deeds in Virginia (Politics Daily Poll Watch Blog)

SurveyUSA

Results of SurveyUSA Election Poll #15927 (SurveyUSA.com)

SurveyUSA Shows McDonnell Clinging to a 59–40 Lead (National Review Online’s The Campaign Spot Blog)

News7 Poll: Republicans hold comfortable leads in statewide contests (WDBJ7.com)

If you haven’t heard it by now, and you want a good laugh, listen to Democrat lieutenant governor candidate Jody Wagner’s interview this morning with WRVA’s Richmond’s Morning News host Jimmy Barrett (click here).

Barrett gets right to the point and asks the former Kaine administration finance secretary about her missed revenue projections, which have resulted in consecutive budget deficits and multiple budget cuts. I’ll give her some credit for her answer — she’s at least learned something from the Obama administration, and that’s the one thing it’s good at: blame, blame and pass the buck, with a litany of boilerplate liberal excuses:

» It was the Bush administration’s fault (at least twice);

» At least Virginia isn’t as bad off as some other states (that’ll make people feel secure);

» Passed the buck to economic forecasting agencies, business leaders and groups, and General Assembly leaders (how about that, Dick Saslaw?);

» But the 6.6 percent revenue growth projection in a slowing economy never gave her pause, even as many in the General Assembly warned the Kaine administration it was too high (she emphatically was “not overly optimistic”); and 

» Repeatedly said, “Let’s be clear,” (to the point where Barrett mockingly repeated it himself).

Not to mention her defensiveness when Barrett tried to loft her a softball about her campaign — she thought he was trying to blame her for the recession, for which she blamed George W. Bush (again).

All these excuses inevitably led to contradictions. Follow this bit of illogic: If it’s the federal government’s fault when things are bad, she must then credit it when things are good; if so, we have no reason for state government. So why is she running? She also got defensive when Barrett mentioned the recession came into focus a year ago, and rudely interrupted him to say she wasn’t in office then, as well as when he simply asked how forecasts might be improved in the future.

But we still haven’t heard the classics from her! Here goes:

On the grossly inaccurate revenue forecasts: 

“If I’m powerful enough to be personally responsible for that, then you want me to be your lieutenant governor.”

Then, the absolute best for last: On the Public Policy Poll (a liberal pollster) that shows all three Democrats behind by double digits:

“The Democratic candidates have not yet begun communicating with the public yet and we will be doing that as the campaign moves along.” 

So, that entire primary thing back in June was a what? Those television ads she ran . . . ? Those campaign appearances and interviews . . . ?

There you have it. It has nothing to do with her previous job performance, but that she and her ticket mates haven’t yet communicated with the public. Don’t worry, though. They plan on it. But with interviews like this, Ms. Wagner may want to delay that communication as long as possible.

I was interviewed this morning on WRVA-AM’s popular Richmond’s Morning News with Jimmy Barrett about the murder of abortionist Dr. George Tiller in Kansas (click here to listen). Jimmy is a very good-natured host and I always enjoy his show. 

He started out by saying about the alleged killer, Scott Roeder: “He’s probably the poster child for what a lot of liberals think pro life people are . . . there are gonna be people out there who are going to take a look at Scott Roeder and say, ‘Well, this is what the pro-life movement is all about.’”

Jimmy then went on and described Scott Roeder’s profile like this:

“Called himself a citizen of the Republic of Kansas;
didn’t believe in income taxes, social security taxes;
refused to register his car car; has a history of mental illness issues, etc. So this guy is a nutjob.”      

Jimmy then said that this is obviously not what most pro-lifer’s look like, but liberals are going to try to make it seem that way, and he’s right.

As I pointed out with Jimmy on his show, there are “nutjobs” that claim all types of causes. There will always be people to take things to unimaginable extremes and frankly shame the rest of the movement.

Sadly, a perfect example of a leftist “nutjob” surfaced just one day after the murder of Dr. Tiller. In a case that has not received as much Mainstream Media coverage, a man named Carlos Bledsoe, who converted to Islam and now goes by Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad, shot two people at an Army recruitment center in Arkansas (see RedState.com, here). 

So far, the profile of this shooter reads:

“Peace activist;”
“One who had a ‘disagreement over the military operations;’”
“Opened fire ‘with the specific purpose of targeting military personnel;’” and, “Held ‘political and religious motives.’” 

My point is: the left best be very careful accusing all pro-lifers as being like Scott Roeder and the right better be careful not to claim all Muslims or peaceniks are like Carlos Bledsoe. Both sides need not exploit the tragedies to push extreme agendas.  

These are both incidents of extreme hatred perpetrated by cowards.  Hopefully, justice will prevail in both cases. In the meantime, it will be interesting to see if the profiling by the left continues.