On Sunday's "Meet the Press," host David Gregory continually pressed Republican Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell on the GOP being "too extreme" and "diabolically successful" at obstructing President Obama's agenda, while he chatted with Democratic Governor Deval Patrick about Obama finding his "voice" and the Red Sox firing their manager after a poor season.

Early in the segment, Gregory remarked to McDonnell that President Obama "must like the comparison" with the Republican 2012 candidates and wondered: "...do you worry...that the national Republican Party is fielding candidates who will ultimately have to be too extreme and will lose the opportunity to retake the political center, which is how presidential campaigns are won?"  

Today's Washington Post devoted an 8-paragraph editorial to slamming "Virginia's abortion end run," worrying that "poor African Americans and Hispanics" in the Old Dominion will have a harder go of killing their unborn children thanks to recently-issued Board of Health regulations on the state's abortion clinics.

[Last Friday, you may recall, Post staffer Anita Kumar gave readers a skewed portrayal of the hearing in which the regs were adopted.]

A new Washington Post poll of Virginians finds that Old Dominion voters are optimistic about the direction of the state, approve of the job of their conservative governor, and are divided on the question of same-sex marriage.

Guess how the Post handled reporting the results.

That's right, the paper hyped the same-sex marriage numbers on A1 but shuffled the good news for McDonnell over to page B1, even though an astonishing 50 percent of Old Dominion Democrats approve of his job in office, and arguably by extension his conservative policies.

 

"Morning Joe" co-host Mika Brzezinski broke from the panel discussion Tuesday and implored Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell to close the state's so-called gun show loophole. The MSNBC panel was discussing lax gun show laws allowing persons to purchase semi-automatic guns with little or no background check performed on them.

Brzezinski, seemingly abandoning journalism in favor of advocacy, tersely asked Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell on camera to close the state's gun show loophole. "Just close the loophole. Governor Bob McDonnell," Brzezinski pleaded, staring into the camera as she singled out the state's chief executive.

Virginia law presently allows private transactions at gun shows to be completed without paperwork. Federal law mandates licenced gun sellers to perform background checks on buyers; private sellers are not obliged by the state to do so.
 

Painting conservatives as racists is a favorite pastime of the mainstream media and a recent move by Republican Virginia governor Bob McDonnell gave them more ammunition to do just that.

McDonnell issued a proclamation on April 2 stating April would be Confederate History Month, but failed to note the role slavery played in the U.S. Civil War that lasted from 1861-1865. Commentators and journalists seized upon McDonnell's omission as proof that conservatives are inherent racists, despite an apology and later inclusion in the proclamation of a strong statement condemning slavery.

In his apology, McDonnell called slavery an "abomination" and explained that the proclamation was "solely intended to promote the study of our history, encourage tourism in our state in advance of the 150th Anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War, and recognize Virginia's unique role in the story of America."

These allegations of racism against conservatives have percolated in the media since Barack Obama's election in 2008. "Confederate" or "Confederacy" has been used 60 times in news reports on ABC, CBS and NBC since November 4, 2008, but it's this proclamation, coupled with the anger over the recently passed health care reform, that had some in the media wondering if conservatives were ready to wage Civil War Redux.