Frank Atkinson, a Richmond lawyer and Republican insider, explained it well in an op-ed in The Post. "After a decade in which the Mark Warner-led Virginia Democrats elected back-to-back governors by playing down the culture wars and focusing on quality-of-life concerns, the man who seeks to succeed them appears headed in the opposite direction ... Creigh Deeds's campaign has talked up abortion issues and is suddenly abuzz over a two-decades-old graduate thesis in which McDonnell wrote rather longingly of days when government policy was more friendly to stay-at-home moms and traditional families." Deeds, in hopes of driving out voters, particularly in the liberal leading Northern Virginia suburbs, has tried to use the thesis to cast McDonnell as a social extremist who opposes abortion, birth control and women in the workplace. Full Article at HumanEvents.com