Get Rid of Morgan Griffith!

That smarmy, sneering, snarling jerk of a state delegate from Salem, Morgan Griffith, whom the Repubs in Virginia think so much of that they named him Majority Leader, was at his knuckle-dragging worst today. Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine is expected to be named chairman of the Democratic National Committee and Griffith just can't restrain himself from taking the low road.

Instead of wishing Kaine well and taking into consideration the fact that having him as head of the party in control could be good for Virginia (the classy thing to do), Griffith whines that Kaine'll be desperately needed in Richmond to help pass a new budget. If memory serves, Griffith is the primary impediment to a budget of any kind. He has held up the process and used every device available to him to disrupt any kind of compromise that would make sense.

It's not just what drunk driving lawyer Griffith* says that's annoying, either. It's his snearing manner, his gutter politics demeanor. We all deserve better than Griffith, but my suspicion is that because he's from Salem and accurately represents his constituency, we will not be without him until he chooses to leave the House of Delegates.

About the only thing sensible people in Virginia can do to counter Salem's intransigence is to vote Democrats back into the majority so they can neuter Griffith in much the same way as he rendered the Democrats representing the Roanoke Valley irrelevant the minute he could after the Repubs won a majority. He used committee assignments (or lack of them) and gerrymandering to gut this region's excellent leadership in the General Assembly and that representation has been weak and ineffective since. Which suits Griffith just fine, since he's anti-government, in any case.

This embarrassing nuisance really, truly needs to find a life outside government.

* Blogger Waldo Jaquith (son of my friend Janis Jaquith, the NPR essayist) wrote this recently when Charlottesville law firm Albo & Oblon announced it would bring on Griffith as its Roanoke-area representative: The "hire isn’t unusual, in terms of qualifications: Albo’s is an upstate law firm specializes in getting rich guys off of DUI charges, while Griffith's law firm specializes (well, specalized) in the same thing in Salem."