With about a month remaining until Election Day, in-the-loop Virginia Republicans describe themselves as feeling “really good” about Bob McDonnell’s position in the governor’s race.

Their sense is that yes, the thesis did some damage, but Democrat Creigh Deeds has beaten that horse to death and the election is turning to jobs and taxes.

I asked around about one Republican official’s worries about the get-out-the-vote operation, and was told that as of mid-September, the McDonnell campaign has knocked on twice as many doors as the McCain campaign did in all of 2008. A knocked-upon door is not necessarily a vote, but those efforts help ensure that a campaign doesn’t leave potential supportive votes uncast.

Beyond that, the atmosphere is following the tradition in Virginia’s governor’s races — the party that won the White House is tired, complacent, and less motivated, and the party that lost the White House is fired up, hungry, and driven. Earlier this year, Republicans overperformed in four special elections in Northern Virginia, winning two races and coming close in two other heavily Democratic seats.

Creigh Deeds is now using lines of attack from other beleaguered Democrats; from Jon Corzine, he’s claiming that his opponent opposes mammograms. Their basis?

In 2006, 41 state attorneys general signed a letter in opposition to proposed federal legislation supported by President George W. Bush to allow businesses to provide health insurance that does not include coverage for state mandates, such as coverage in Virginia for cancer screenings, including mammograms, and immunizations. Bob McDonnell did not sign this letter.

This is even more egregious than Corzine’s attack in New Jersey; there, Corzine is trying to use Republican Chris Christie’s support for creating more affordable, no-frills alternative plans to justify a claim that Christie doesn’t want cancer sufferers to get mammograms. Major media have dismissed Corzine’s claim.

Deeds, meanwhile, is taking an unsigned letter to justify an accusation of opposing mammograms.

I hear the McDonnell campaign will hit back at Deeds’s credibility on this and other issues. Nonetheless, it appears one of my Virginia guys was right — the Deeds strategy will be to turn the race into a mudbath and hope all those McDonnell-leaning independents get sick of the whole thing and stay home.

(By the way, you don’t hear Democrats talking up the chances of their lieutenant governor and attorney general candidates much lately. There are fewer polls looking at those races, but most of them put the Republican candidates up anywhere from 7 to 12 percentage points. It’s not unprecedented for candidates of different parties to win on Election Day; four years ago, Democrat Tim Kaine won the governor’s office while Republican Bill Bolling and Bob McDonnell won the lieutenant governor’s and attorney general’s offices.)