Last Friday, the Virginia gubernatorial race’s Democratic candidate offered a rather eyebrow-raisingly weak defense of GreenTech — which, under his chairmanship, was ostensibly supposed to become a successful Virginia job-creating green-car startup company… but has actually only hired about 100 people, produced a few hundred cars in Mississippi, looks an awful lot like a visa mill for rich foreign investors, and is currently the subject of an SEC investigation.

Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli was not impressed, and offered a rejoinder to McAuliffe’s evidence-thin article at National Review on Monday:

First off, what was most revealing about the piece was not what it said, but what it didn’t say. Nowhere in the op-ed, for instance, did McAuliffe explain statements by multiple former GreenTech employees – expressed to numerous publications including The Washington Post – that they were instructed to pretend to assemble vehicles when foreign investors toured the Horn Lake plant. If true, and if those investors relied on what they saw in deciding to invest, then that would be classic fraud.

What role did then–GreenTech chairman Terry McAuliffe have in those employees’ being told to pretend to assemble cars? He conveniently skipped over this subject in his op-ed.

And while McAuliffe continues to refuse to answer questions, GreenTech has once again denied media requests to tour the plant — this despite McAuliffe’s claims he is proud of the company. In reality, McAuliffe’s refusal to stand up and answer questions is a clear admission he believes the claims made by both executives and employees against GreenTech’s business practices developed and executed under his chairmanship can’t be defended outside highly scripted settings and sheltered fora. …

I don’t know how closely Virginia voters are paying attention to the campaign at this level of detail — the polls are still coming up pretty much tied and we’re still waiting for Virginians to get really engaged with the ten or so weeks left until the election — but GreenTech is certainly not turning into the winning talking point they might have once hoped.  …Which is probably why the McAuliffe camp is right back to hitting hard on the “extremist conservative,” “war on women”-ish tack again today. Ugh (via the Weekly Standard):

If Akin and Mourdock were foot soldiers in the war on women’s health, Ken Cuccinelli is one of its leaders. He’s only running neck-and-neck with Terry because lots of Virginia voters don’t know about his record.

Todd Akin outed his extreme beliefs when he said “legitimate rape,” but Cuccinelli probably won’t in such a public fashion. That’s why we need your help now more than ever.

Help us get out the word that Ken Cuccinelli would be as dangerous for Virginia as Todd Akin was for Missouri by making a $5 donation now.

It’s undeniable: Akin and Cuccinelli are two peas in a pod.

They both support Personhood bills that would ban many common forms of birth control, including the pill.

While Cuccinelli might be a good enough politician not to say something as abhorrent as “legitimate rape,” he believes that abortion should be illegal even in the case of rape and incest — just like Todd Akin. Cuccinelli proudly called himself, “the most aggressive pro-life leader in the Virginia Senate.”

And the cherry on top of their extreme sundae: they both tried to defund Planned Parenthood.