Appearances are deceiving.

With all the backslapping of the opening days of the 2008 General Assembly, it looked like old-home week at the state Capitol.

It's really the season of the long knives.

There are all the ingredients for a nasty session. Coming off the legislative elections, Virginia government is even more divided. Democrats again control the Senate -- barely. Republicans still run the House but with a shrunken majority.

This makes for tricky going for Gov. Tim Kaine, a Democrat who gets into trouble with both parties.

On spending, Republicans don't like many of Kaine's ideas -- from expanded pre-K, to more bond-financed construction on college campuses, to his $241 million raid on the rainy-day fund to balance a budget out of whack because of the collapse of the housing market.

The Republicans are OK on his proposal to spend an additional $42 million on mental health. After the Virginia Tech mass shootings, not even gun-lovin' Republicans in safe districts can afford to look the other way.

Pick an issue and the politicians are divided on it: immigration, firearms rights, health care, payday lending, smoking in public, pay raises for public employees. The list goes on.

The reason: The election shifted the direction of Virginia government only slightly. Attribute that to the House GOP's insurance policy: partisan redistricting.

In the first days of the session, there's ample evidence legislators neither work nor play well together.

In the House, Republicans threw the three top Democrats off their old committees. One, Del. Lionell Spruill Sr. of Chesapeake, was yanked from Appropriations -- a plum assignment because that's the committee that writes the budget.

The Democrats say this is punishment for election gains. Not so, says House Majority Leader Morgan Griffith, R-Salem. The shuffle, he says, is only to accommodate the fattened Democratic minority.

But Speaker Bill Howell of Stafford, the Republican who decides assignments, isn't the least bit displeased by this potential source of discomfort for Democrats.

Such as Del. Brian Moran of Alexandria. He's head of the House Democratic Caucus and a likely candidate for governor. Moran now is stuck on committees that handle such touchy issues as taxes and gun control.

(Speaking of: Notice Moran took credit for working with hot-button-issue artist George Allen on parole abolition in 1994? Never mind Moran, an assistant local prosecutor at the time, didn't become a delegate until 1996. Details, details.)

Ward Armstrong of Henry, the glib, model-train-loving leader of the Democratic minority, is banished to, among other places, a committee that writes abortion restrictions.

In the Senate, where civility is supposed to be the rule, the parties also are quarreling.

Republicans are ticked over the 10-5 Democratic tilt on Education and Health, which the new majority envisions as a barrier to abortion controls.

This is the Republicans' way of telegraphing to Democrats they won't be pushed around. But it's also how that struttin' bantam of a new minority leader, Tommy Norment of James City, signals to his caucus that he's in charge.

Don't be misled by Norment's grin and flowery rhetoric.

Along with the jokes, the bonhomie and the friendly speeches of the past week, it's warning the worst is yet to come.
Contact Jeff E. Schapiro at (804) 6496814 or jschapiro@timesdispatch.com. He provides news analysis each Friday at 8:33 a.m. on WCVE radio (88.9 FM).