Shannon Column: Move along, nothing to see here

Pardon me while I gloat.

What a welcome change to vote for a candidate who wins big. After writing in Tom Tancredo and Sarah Palin during the last two presidential elections, checking the box for Bob McDonnell finally put me
on the winning side.

And for once, I’m not alone. Polling showed that 41 percent of McDonnell voters were “very enthusiastic” about his candidacy. In contrast with 2008 surveys that showed the choice between voting for John
McCain and volunteering for a clinical study of dysentery drugs was a toss-up for conservative Republicans.

I confess to having a spring in my step as I deftly avoided curiously inert Democrat poll workers and made my way inside and voted. Initially I thought Republicans wouldn’t get to enjoy the victory for long.
White House blame shifters already tossed Deeds under the bus last week, claiming his failure to fully embrace Obama caused his defeat.

Instead Obama’s busy spinmeisters began peddling the story to a credulous mainstream media that the only off-year election that really counts is in New Jersey where Gov. Jon Corzine did everything but
offer to invest Obama’s Nobel winnings on Wall Street.

Oops, in another example of Obama Administration acumen the Dems managed to lose New Jersey, too! Of course the Washington Post assures us there’s nothing to see here, in fact one headline
reads “No Referendum on Obama,” but in both states voters who in fact used the election as a referendum on Obama voted against him.

That’s what makes the New Jersey loss so telling. Democrat registration there outnumbers Republican 34 percent to 20 percent, the legislature is overwhelmingly Democrat, all statewide officials are
Democrats, the Congressional delegation is Democrat, the incumbent governor is a Democrat enjoying all the advantages of incumbency, Obama carried the state by 57 percent, the Republican
candidate is fat and has a lousy jump shot. Yet he still won by five points!

When Barack puts the full Obama on the voters and his man still loses in an overwhelmingly Democrat state, it’s time to start drawing up a seating chart for the lifeboats.

Wouldn’t you like to be a Democrat incumbent on Wednesday morning knowing your political fate was in the hands of the Three Stooges: Obama, Pelosi & Reid?

Meanwhile, Creigh Deeds must feel like a Washington Post “Date Lab” loser who tries everything — runs on the thesis, pledges to raise taxes — and still gets a fake phone number at the end of the
evening.

More proof mixed marriages don’t work. “Country” Creigh Deeds just didn’t fit in with those Post metrosexuals no matter how hard he tried. When the Posties made their in-kind campaign contribution with
the McDonnell Thesis (a 20-year-old term paper that rivaled the Da Vinci Code for popularity among political archeologists but failed to strike a nerve among actual voters) Deeds took the hint and ran with
it. And ran. And ran. And ran it into the ground. The Post finally said McDonnell benefitted from a “lackluster Democratic opponent.” Ouch!

It is a strange election in Virginia when the Democrat runs on social issues. Usually a Democrat will appeal to his party’s base during the primary, shaking hands at abortion mills and hitting the gay bars;
then move toward the middle during the general election.

Creigh Deeds did just the opposite. He wins the primary as the moderate and then boards the Wayback machine and sets the destination for 1989.

Deeds talked so much about abortion that I thought Planned Parenthood sponsored his campaign. And I could have sworn I got a robocall Sunday from Anita Hill.

Talk about going back to the failed policies of the past. The only retro social issues event that Deeds left out was a bra burning.

The Postie political staff is of course appalled by the prospect of a McDonnell victory and has spent the fall warning Virginia voters that if elected McDonnell will govern as a conservative. To which I say,
thank God.

McDonnell didn’t have to talk about “hot-button” issues because his record over the years proved the Republican base could trust him. McCain, on the other hand, had a real one-two punch: the base
didn’t trust him and the independents thought he was erratic.

And won’t it be comforting next year to have a first lady in Richmond with the same last name as the first man? When a married Democrat politician appears in a photo clutching a woman with a different
last name it just means the first couple has a “modern marriage” so get used to it. When a Republican appears in the same type of photo, it usually means marital difficulties.

Michael R. Shannon is owner of MANDATE: Message, Media & Public Relations, located in Woodbridge.