A GOP sweep

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Bob McDonnell's convincing win in Tuesday's gubernatorial election is testament to the wisdom of running a focused campaign attuned to the basic concerns of voters.

Though a staunch social conservative as a legislator and, to a lesser degree, as attorney general, McDonnell seldom broached such distractions on the hustings, concentrating instead on jobs, transportation and schools. And he stuck to his message with a practiced unflappability and genial disposition that exuded confidence.

McDonnell's poise was in blatant contrast to Creigh Deeds, his Democratic opponent. The senator from Bath County struggled to connect with voters in Northern Virginia, the mother lode for successful Democratic candidates in the Old Dominion. Despite a strong boost from The Washington Post's editorial page, Deeds was vague about solutions to the region's traffic congestion before finally endorsing higher transportation taxes, a stance that bombed in other parts of the Old Dominion.

Rather than articulating a positive vision of a Deeds administration, the Democrat seized on McDonnell's old master's thesis, which espoused old-fashioned social conventions mostly disavowed by McDonnell, as proof of his foe's cloaked radical persona. Deeds' harping left him with an image as a negative campaigner.

Deeds was also ambivalent about President Obama, whose ambitious agenda has rankled Virginians but whose young supporters, so crucial to his carrying Virginia in last year's presidential election, Deeds needed. Most of them stayed home Tuesday while the Republican base flocked to the polls.

McDonnell's victory and the defeat of Democratic Gov. John Corzine in New Jersey buoy the GOP faithful, who nevertheless remain deeply divided over the direction of the party. McDonnell's winning strategy belies the mantra of GOP purists.

The skills McDonnell displayed on the campaign trail must now be transferred to the more onerous task of governing and fulfilling those campaign pledges in an inhospitable economy.