Tim Kaine doesn’t get it

Garren Shipley summed up the new reality in Richmond quite well:

In the end, the GOP settled on a funding mechanism that didn’t require a tax increase.

The measure was scuttled in the Senate, but in this instance, that’s immaterial. For the first time since the great tax fight of 2004, the GOP caucus held together in the face of pressure from a Senate and governor calling for tax increases.

While the policy implications of the GOP’s new-found unity are debatable, the political landscape appears to have changed markedly, at least from where I’m sitting.

The strategy pioneered by Democratic Gov. Mark Warner — peel off just enough Republicans to pass the bill, then let a disaffected base take it out on the party at the ballot box — didn’t work. Nor did regional divisions in the GOP lead to a bi-partisan tax increase.
 
Couple that with the unity in the Senate’s Republican ranks forged by their losses in November 2007, and the complexion of Capitol Square is different today, indeed.

We reached the similar conclusion during the Bearing Drift podcast.  The Republicans are no longer squabbling amongst themselves.  Just as importantly, they came up with a creative plan that not only doesn’t raise taxes but actually links transportation funding to transportation activity, while the Democrats insisted on tax increases or nothing.

Meanwhile, Governor Kaine continued to be stuck in the past - the glory days (for the Dems) when they could carve up the GOP at will (Richmond Times-Dispatch):

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a group work so hard to do nothing,” he said. “It was a show about nothing, doing nothing taken to an art.”

. . .

The governor hinted that lawmakers who stand in the way of a deal will have a choice to make the next time around — whether they want the governor to offer them a ladder to climb out of the transportation mess, or a shovel to dig the state into a deeper financial hole when it comes to roads.

Perhaps the Governor didn’t notice Bill Bolling’s response, but unlike 2004, 2006, and even 2007, the GOP is eager to restart the discussion this time:

Fortunately, the General Assembly meets every year, and we will have another chance to address this issue in January.  It remains my hope that the members of the General Assembly will work to craft a transportation solution that relies on existing revenue sources and innovative transportation alternatives, not higher taxes.

This is no longer a battle between confident Democrats and defensive Republicans; it is one between confidence, creative, and united Republicans on one side and tax-hiking, backward-looking, and politically tone-deaf Democrats on the other.

The Democrats, from Governor Kaine on down, still don’t see this.  They’re in for a very rude shock come November 2009.  Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch.