Bob McDonnell Showed Us The Meaning of Conservative Family Values Depends On The Circumstances

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Since a Virginia jury convicted Bob and Maureen McDonnell on multiple corruption charges, many commented on the message the verdict sent to corrupt politicians. Meanwhile, the “family values” GOPT is trying to rehabilitate itself with women by holding men only fundraisers and lecturing us on how we can protect ourselves from sexual assaults if we just focused on marriage instead of careers.

Ironically, throughout his trial Bob McDonnell told us what conservative style “family values” means in practice. In short, it depends on the circumstances. Throughout his political career, Bob McDonnell’s family was the center of his universe. When he and his wife were on trial, McDonnell showed us the version of family values he believes in when the going gets tough.

As a graduate of Pat Robertson’s Regent University, McDonnell was thoroughly schooled on morality and family values, conservative style. His Master’s Thesis, “The Republican Party’s Vision for the Family: The Compelling Issue of the Decade” was a testament to the family values he learned.

During his gubernatorial campaign, McDonnell used every opportunity to show Virginians that he is a true “family values” candidate by including his family in political ads and using them as props when the occasion called for it. He walked the walk of conservative “family values” by allowing employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and he signed mandatory ultrasounds for women seeking abortions into law.

He was the Republican Party’s walking billboard for “family values”. We got a peek at what “family values” really means to Bob McDonnell when he rejected a deal that would have spared his wife of any charges and the couple could have avoided a trial. Bob McDonnell would have escaped conviction on all the corruption charges, in exchange for accepting a plea on one felony fraud charge.

Granted, conservatives may believe that McDonnell put his “faith in the lord” that he and his wife would be exonerated on all charges – and that made going to trial a worthwhile sacrifice.

However, the day McDonnell rejected that deal was the day we learned that McDonnell’s version of “family values” means the dutiful loyal wife takes the fall while hubby assaults her character.

Before the McDonnells faced criminal charges, they were the picture of the ideal happily married conservative couple. Then they offered up the broken marriage defense.

The strategy has been a stunner coming from the McDonnells, who betrayed no hint of marital strife from the time the governor carried the first lady over the Executive Mansion threshold on Inauguration Day in 2010 to January, when they stood smilingly arm in arm at his successor’s swearing-in.

At trial, however, their defense hinged on persuading the jury that since their marriage was broken, they couldn’t have been committing crimes together. Of course, that doesn’t work because people don’t need to be married, let alone happily married, to swap political favors for cash and gifts.

The irony is the broken marriage defense actually proved the McDonnells are liars. Dahlia Lithwick noted,

You just can’t explain lies with lies. And the McDonnell strategy always seemed to be just that: “We couldn’t have been lying to you about our finances, Virginia, because we were too busy lying to you about everything else. We lied about our marriage for years. We lied about our values and our integrity. We lied about our political and economic convictions. We lied about the centrality of family and marriage to our vision of governance.

But Bob McDonnell didn’t stop there.

The assassination on Maureen McDonnell’s character continued throughout the trial with “revelations” that Maureen had a “crush“ on the couple’s Daddy Sugar aka dodgy businessman, Jonnie Williams. The corruption was all Maureen’s doing. She was a dumb bunny who got sucked into Jonnie Williams’s web of corruption. Mr. Family values knew nothing about swapping favors from the governor in exchange for gifts and money. Poor Governor Family Values felt “betrayed” when his “friend, Jonnie Williams contradicted the claim that Maureen had a crush on him and more so when Williams testified that he wrote the checks to the McDonnell family’s “breadwinner.”

The fact that Bob McDonnell did Williams some “favors” in exchange for those checks was merely part of his job as governor.

Poor, innocent Bob McDonnell. He was the long-suffering upstanding family values governor suffering because of his wife’s flawed character.

He did favors for Jonnie Williams, but the corruption was all on his wife with the roving eye. Maureen was the “nutbag” who was disappointed when she found out his salary as a prosecutor and bad Maureen was “less happy“ than he was when he won the gubernatorial election.

Suddenly the same women who Candidate “family values” McDonnell said did the heavy lifting of raising their five children, while building a business and was on demand as his political prop became the “nutbag” who had eyes for his “friend” and brought about a Republican shining star’s political downfall.

On Friday, lawyers for Bob and Maureen McDonnell said they plan to appeal the verdict reached by a Virginia jury on Thursday. It will be interesting to see what versions of the truth and the state of the McDonnell’s marriage their lawyers will ask the court to believe this time.

Image: Richmond Times Dispatch