2009 McDonnell same as 1989 McDonnell?

Apparently, there are several Virginia Republicans that agree with that premise and they are bucking their party and supporting Creigh Deeds. According to the Shad Plank, Senators Marty Williams and Russ Potts and Delegate Jim Dillard all think McDonnell's 1989 master's thesis (from Pat Roberson's Regent University, formerly Christan Broadcasting Network University, yep, CBN University... 700 Club University... geez) depicts a very similar social agenda that he pursued in the Virginia House of Delegates...

Selected excerpts of the Shad Plank blog post are below:

A handful of Virginia Republicans, including former Sen. Marty Williams of Newport News, are taking on Republican Bob McDonnell's 1989 thesis and saying that it matches his ensuing legislative record.

Williams and Sen. Russ Potts and Del. Jim Dillard all served in the General Assembly for the GOP, but they have been willing to break with their party leadership especially during this campaign. After McDonnell released a transportation plan that relied on off shore drilling, future port growth and tolls on drivers coming in from North Carolina - the three men stepped away from the GOP to back Democrat Creigh Deeds.

Now Williams, Potts and Dillard are stepping out to take on McDonnell's Regent University thesis which was penned when McDonnell was a 34-year-old graduate student at the Pat Robertson-led university in Virginia Beach.

The 93-page paper including some unflattering references to women in the workplace, calling them "detrimental" to the family. The paper also takes on "cohabitators, fornicators and homosexuals." McDonnell has disavowed and repudiated the things he wrote about working women and said that the paper doesn't reflect his views, but rather was an "academic exercise" and part of a 20-year-old assignment that he has not considered or read in two decades.

.....

McDonnell said that voters should focus on his record in the General Assembly.

Williams, Potts, Dillard and Del. Katherine Waddell, an Independent, all said that the thesis and McDonnell's record are playing the same tune.

"My biggest surprise is that he's running away from it," Williams said of the thesis. "I really do think that's who he is."

....

"Anybody who thinks I jump off the shelf and support every Democrat is mistaken," Williams said. "This is the first Democrat I've supported and it might be the last."

Potts said that the best political leaders govern from the center.

"Bob has never been about governing from the middle," Potts said. "He wants to govern from the far right. He believes that passionately and I respect him for that."

Potts noted that McDonnell carried 35 bills that would have restricted abortion rights.

"He was out of the mainstream all those many years," Potts said. "The record is the record, I was there."

Dillard said that McDonnell was "always pushing social issues" in the General Assembly.

"The Bob McDonnell who is running for governor is not the Bob McDonnell who we knew and served with in the General Assembly," Dillard said. "It's a total re-invention of Bob McDonnell so he can be governor."

Waddell said that the thesis cannot be dismissed as the partisan musings of a young adult because McDonnell would enter the legislature only a few years after the paper was written.

"You can run from yourself, but you can't run far," Waddell said.

Well there you go... members of Bob McDonnell's own party think he's out of the mainstream (Note to self: Sponsoring 35 bills to restrict abortion rights access is not mainstream)... and they think he is performing "plastic surgery" on his own political career so that he can be governor.

Virginians, please don't let Pat Robertson's disciple, Bob McDonnell, become governor.