RICHMOND — Robert F. McDonnell had just done something huge, something that for nearly a generation, every other Virginia governor had tried and failed to do. As leader of a state with some of the nation’s worst traffic and a road construction fund due to go broke by 2017, he’d ordered legislators to find a fix.

At the very moment they complied, as the balky Senate voted to send a transportation funding bill to the Republican governor, somebody watching the proceedings from inside McDonnell’s third-floor Capitol office snapped a photo that soon wound up on Twitter.

McDonnell, hands covering his mouth, palms and fingertips together as if in prayer, looks overcome with emotion. An applauding aide, tie aflutter and knees bent, appears to be doing a celebratory hop.

McDonnell looks very happy. And that’s a problem, at least now, as conservatives criticize the deal, which is heavy on taxes and came only after Democrats exacted a written pledge from the governor on Medicaid expansion. In supporting the deal, McDonnell broke a major campaign promise — made in 2009 while eviscerating Democrat R. Creigh Deeds for his willingness to raise taxes for transportation.

“Once the dust settles on this and Bob McDonnell begins the next leg of his political journey, that’s the struggle he will have to deal with: Is he this fiscally balanced moderate compromiser? Or is he the fiscally, socially conservative hero that he still wants a lot of people to see him as?” Elleithee said. “He kind of wants people to see him as all of the above, but with this Republican Party, I’m not sure that it’s possible.”

The transportation bill cleared the General Assembly six days before dug-in Washington let budget cuts known as sequestration take effect. McDonnell — who tried selling state-run liquor stores and offshore drilling rights before relenting to a plan with tax increases — said the nation’s capital should come together like Virginia’s.

“It was evenly supported by Republicans and Democrats, I think 44 Republicans, 42 Democrats supported the bill,” McDonnell said on WTOP (103.5 FM) a few days after the vote.

Those numbers suggest more bipartisan bliss than was the case, considering that Republicans far outnumber Democrats in Richmond. Half of McDonnell’s 88-member caucus was with him.

Republicans who weren’t on board said they think the governor gave up more than he got. His original $845 million-a-year proposal raised some taxes and fees but nixed the gas tax and purported to be essentially “revenue neutral” because the big money rolled in only when and if the economy expanded.

By the time the General Assembly had its way, it was an $880 million-a-year package with an additional $550 million in regional tax increases. The few selling points for conservatives — that the gasoline tax, though newly tied to inflation, is cut, and that $200 million a year comes from existing general fund revenue — will evaporate without federal legislation allowing states to collect tax on Internet sales. If Congress does not pass that long-stalled bill by January 2015, the gas tax will rise and the general fund contribution will drop to $60 million a year.