The Age of Innocence.
Tim Kaine was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, but grew up in Overland Park, Kansas. All that folksy Midwestern-ness seemed to imbue Kaine with a decency and honesty that people noticed. One imagines a young man so innocent and naive that he would sneak behind the barn and do nothing. Kaine even interrupted his studies at Harvard Law to help Jesuit missionaries in Honduras run the prophetically named El Progresso School.
Once upon a time in Virginia. Tim Kaine entered politics the old fashioned way – he married into it. While at Harvard, Kaine met his future wife, the daughter of former Virginia governor Linwood Holton. From there Kaine’s political career proceeded rapidly. 1994 – Richmond City Council, 1998 – Mayor of Richmond, 2001 – Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, 2005 – Governor of Virginia. Through all of those Virginia-based positions Kaine was seen as diligent and likable, even by those who disagreed with his leftist views.
Creature from the black lagoon. Kaine’s journey to the dark side began when he became the chairman of the Democratic National Committee in 2009. He was no longer operating within the corrupt-but-friendly confines of the bourbon-and-branch water set in Richmond. Now he was dealing with the mentally deranged, venomous reptiles-from-hell in the D.C. swamp. He went from Timmy the Sweet to the Lizard of Oz. His election as U.S. Senator from Virginia in 2013 may have pulled him from the deepest cesspool of Washington’s primordial ooze but he was about to make a move that would cement his position as a central character from the original Star Wars cantina scene.
When you lie down with dogs … …you get up with fleas. In the case of being Hillary Clinton’s running mate – bionic, radioactive killer fleas that infect their host dog with an overwhelming addiction to misrepresentation, deceit and outright lying. Pterodactyl Timmy was hatched in the nest of the high-flying reptiles of the Clinton crime family.
No such Gorsuch. After conversion to the reptilian class Kaine unleashed one of his most outlandish lies. Aiming his beady lizard gaze at then-Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch Kaine claimed on Twitter that,
He has cavalierly referred to contraceptive use – a constitutionally protected right for 50+ yrs – as ‘the wrongdoing of others.’
Kaine’s quote refers to an opinion then Judge Gorsuch wrote in the famous (or infamous) Hobby Lobby case. He was trying to describe how the owners of the Hobby Lobby company felt about contraceptives. In no way, shape or form could anybody have interpreted Gorsuch’s words as being his own opinion of contraceptives. You can find Judge Gorsuch’s opinion here. You can read Mark Hemmingway’s take on the incident here. In true swamp-dweller fashion Kaine hoped that by telling the big lie he could perhaps sideswipe Neil Gorsuch’s nomination. In this case it turned out Kaine’s dishonesty was exceeded only by his incompetence. Neil Gorsuch is now a member of the U.S. Supreme Court.
General orders. Kaine could have simply apologized, perhaps claiming that Twitter was a poorly chosen vehicle for expressing that opinion. But he didn’t. Instead, he wrote a six-page explanation with a 1,000 word summary of how his lie was actually unvarnished truth. Kaine could have saved himself some time by studying General George Washington. It was he who said, “It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.” Unfortunately, Pterodactyl Timmy couldn’t find that quote in his bag of carpet. His bad excuse fell on deaf ears. Ramesh Ponnuru over at Bloomberg was having none of it.
Here we go again. On Monday President Trump will put forth his nominee to fill the Supreme Court vacancy caused by Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement. Will the high-flying reptile of the D.C. swamp (Pterodactyl Timmy) be able to refrain from further lies about this nominee? Let’s hope so. The last three former governors of Virginia have been Pterodactyl Timmy, Rolex Bob and Terry McCronyCapitalism (whatever happened to that golf cart company, anyway?). We’re getting a bad reputation.
— Don Rippert
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