A term stirs a quandary

Extremism, a popular term in the reactionary tinderbox of politics, is definable empirically only in circumstances stretching far into extremes. Otherwise, one fellow’s half-baked fanatic might well be another’s impassioned visionary. Virginia’s gubernatorial candidates are cases in point.

Sagging in the polls amid murmurs that his campaign is a shambles, R. Creigh Deeds, D-Bath County, seized a weather-worn plank last week and proceeded to swing, whether at himself or opponent Robert F. McDonnell, R-Virginia Beach, being subject to interpretation. McDonnell, Deeds explained, is one of those people, an anti-abortion weirdo who, gosh, even attended law school at Pat Robertson’s Regent University.

The maneuver struck more than a trifling few people – including us – as distasteful, especially given Deeds’ recent pledge to center his campaign on the economy rather than divisive “social issues.” Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, a Democrat, perhaps is among those who did not approve. “When Democrats ... attack the religious right or go after Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell,” Kaine told a magazine in 2005, “our candidates have sent the signal to a lot of religious people, ‘Well, I guess they’re not interested in me.’ ”

If Deeds and Kaine are at odds on tactics, it’s neither the first difference between them, nor between the governor’s predecessor, the eminently popular Democrat Mark Warner. Both Kaine and Warner campaigned as populists, treating social topics as taboo, and producing in the process a winning formula that others emulated. Kaine, like McDonnell, is a Catholic, and, like another big-name politician of the same faith, former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, declares he’s personally opposed to abortion but supports its legality.

That perhaps explains why Kaine signed into law earlier this year a bill allowing for Virginia to offer “Choose Life” state license plates with the revenue being directed to pregnancy resource centers. Deeds opposed this. It was one of six instances in nine Senate votes in the last two years when Deeds voted against both The Family Foundation’s pro-family positions and the majority in his own chamber, where Democrats hold a 21-19 edge.

In fact, the Family Foundation, a conservative nonprofit group based in Virginia, says Deeds scores just 23 percent in pro-family votes. That ranks him in the bottom fourth of the Senate, behind 11 – or more than half – of his fellow Democrats in the upper house.

Predictably, Republicans dominate the top of the Family Foundation list, though Sen. Phil Puckett, D-Tazewell, ranks higher than Augusta County’s own Emmett Hanger, R-Mount Solon. We concur with most of the foundation’s positions but not all of them – a bill to expand gambling on horse races, for example, did not perturb us, though the foundation opposed it. The group’s positions hew principally to that ideology which liberals, but not all Democrats, especially disdain, Christian conservatism.

Kaine and Warner recognized that such thinking is embraced by many people in that heartland of Virginia reaching beyond the state’s Northern section. Both governors not only moderated their campaigning to allow for this but they also accommodated by tacking slightly right of their base and perhaps their own philosophy in their governing on social issues.

Deeds’ approach figured to be similar, not only because of its proven effectiveness but because it more closely matches his previous pattern and because many of his rural constituents tilt right. The question Deeds sought to raise might produce another less to his liking. If there is an extremist in the race, is it the man in red or the one in blue?