In one week, Minnesota saw the DFL legislature swing and connect with two of the pillars of the philosophical infrastructure of Governor Tim Pawlenty’s administration.  Fresh off of demolishing Pawlenty’s relatively modest record of fiscal restraint with the largest tax increase in state history, the DFL Senate fired his Transportation Commissioner and Lt. Governor:

Transportation Commissioner Carol Molnau was ousted from her job today by the Minnesota Senate, which voted 44 to 22 not to confirm her…

Pawlenty said in a statement that MnDOT had completed more road and bridge projects in Molnau’s five years as commissioner than in any other comparable period in the state’s history, and that several major projects had been accelerated.

“The DFL’s decision to remove the lieutenant governor from her post at MnDOT is disappointing,” Pawlenty’s statement said. “It also shows they’re more interested in partisanship than working together on the important issues facing our state.”

While the political adroit will likely observe that the day’s vote was set in motion five years ago with Pawlenty’s appointment of his right-hand gal in MN/DOT’s head office amid a more closely divided Senate, even the laymen know that whatever weakened clout she may have carried on July 31st, 2007, her tenure collapsed alongside the stretch of I-35 that sat in the Mississippi on August 1st.  As the dust settled and the administration’s critics drew blood with ink, most knew nothing could be done to salvage Molnau’s post – not even a record that saw increased construction and a willingness to entertain the transportation boondoggles of expanded light rail – given her proximity to the Governor.

Removing Molnau had emerged as something of a cause celeb among sectors of the local DFL as eager for a head on a plate as any significant legislative accomplishment.  Coupled with a frustrated supermajority status in their first legislative session, Molnau became as ripe a target as any other to reverse their (until recently) blunted political will.  A roadbound Capt. Edward Smith, Molnau was obliged to go down with her ship as almost all appointments would have.  But few could have expected Molnau, a vociferous but pleasant legislator, to go down with as much fight as a Terracotta warrior.  Perhaps Pawlenty and others simply assumed that her fate was sealed and hoped that a silent and less-than-sturdy defense might quell the growing storm in the Capitol.  

The DFL may have finally bludgeoned their transportation Bête noire but they may regret some of their defenses of their crime of passion.  Imbuing the Commissioners of the Governor’s Cabinet with an autonomy equivalent to a double-parked UN bureaucrat, the DFL implied the Governor had little right towards appointing authorities to carry out his administrative wishes yet alone share a philosophical view that there existed an alternative view of management of the state’s infrastructure outside of simply increasing the tax burden.  Rather, the DFL continued to present a series of false dichotomies as, perhaps in keeping with times, “change” versus doing nothing all.  Saddled with a superminority and few, if any, friendly media outlets, Republican plans to improve transportation or MN/DOT itself were relegated to a shallow grave on the back pages of the Metro section at best.  And without an aggressive effort to showcase an alternative, viable or not, the same strategy will be employed by the DFL’s electoral demolition crew until the margins look less like a Minnesota-flavored version of the Bertrand Snell-sized Republican minorities of the Great Depression.  

Armed with an approval rating far greater than his current legislative lilliputians, Pawlenty would be wise to appoint a replacement more willing to do battle with the DFL Senate and even less likely to be approved.  Basking in victory, there seems little reason why the DFL would or should accept an appointee even remotely on the young governor’s terms.  Perhaps it would be far better to see an endless parade of appointees go before the Senate’s legislative gulliotine and leave MN/DOT headless for the duration if only to see one suggest that fixing the structural deficiencies of the State’s transportation funding system are necessary to improve roads – not paving them over with pork.