It’s a meme now that Republicans are a just yowling mob embracing pure negativity in a way that can only turn off more voters. In an otherwise good column today, Mike Gerson makes this conventional point at the end. But let’s look where the rubber is hitting the road this year electorally. In the off-year gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, the Republican candidates lead both in purple Virginia and blue New Jersey. I have long thought that renewed Republican political success will require straddling the (over-blown) traditionalist-reformist conservative divide. It would require strenuous opposition to Obama and standing firm on social issues, while at the same time offering a fresh, positive policy agenda and a reasonable, solution-oriented tone. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Bob McDonnell. He’s been very tough on Obama’s agenda and he’s (obviously) a social conservative, but he has elaborate plans for education and transportation and has kept his focus on jobs. In fact, it’s the Washington Post and its subsidiary, the Creigh Deeds campaign, that have tried to drag him off of policy and onto a focus on long-ago statements on cultural issues. If McDonnell wins, I suspect he’ll be something of a model for how Republicans run in the Obama era and–I hope–a harbinger of things to come.