Gov. Timothy M. Kaine blasted Republicans yesterday for the collapse of the General Assembly special session on transportation, and the Republicans blasted him back. The blame game is inevitable as the pols mug for the cameras and play to the next day’s headline writers. But Kaine’s comments rang especially hollow.
As Jim Nolan reports for the Times-Dispatch: Kaine “likened what he saw in the Republican-controlled House of Delegates to a situation comedy.
“It was like a Seinfeld episode — a show about nothing,” Kaine told reporters at the Capitol, hours after lawmakers adjourned following a marathon 12-hour day, closing the six-day special session with no transportation fix for the state.
“And in the House, it was a road session about nothing.”
How rich. This comes from a governor who was so unprepared for the special session that he couldn’t even get his own party to introduce his bill in the state Senate. This comes from a governor who made zero effort to reach out to the opposition Republicans and, instead, stumped the state in series of public hearings, hoping to generate public sentiment — that never came — to pressure the Rs into capitulating.
News flash: The entire special session was “about nothing.” If you want to point the finger, point it at the guy who called the special session. That wasn’t Sen. Richard Saslaw, D-Fairfax, chief muckety-muck of the senate. It wasn’t Del. William Howell, R-Stafford, head honcho in the House.
Hands down, the transportation special section has been the biggest gaffe of the Kaine administration. The sooner the governor drops the subject and moves on to other things, the better of he’ll be.
