Michael Pope reports.
One of the benefits of being the party in power is that you get to set the calendar and write the rules, for the most part. Republicans – who are now in the minority – tried to force Democrats into a 30-day session. But Democrats found a way around that, ending the normal session at the midway point and carrying over all the bills over into a special session that starts this week.
Stephen Farnsworth at the University of Mary Washington says the Republican strategy seemed to be doomed to fail from the start. The first rule of politics is pick fights you can win, he explains. And this was a fight it seems to me that the Republicans were not going to win because they didn t have the means of compelling an outcome of a shorter session.