Letters to the Editor

• Viability

  [Read the article: A genuine political sea change?]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  Sorry, I know my typing sucks and my proofreading is worse.

  Washington is a pretty cynical town, and one of the issues that is beginning to bite the White House and the Republicans on the ass is viability, or to put it another way, the desire of inhabitants of the DC scene to preserve their viability. The French have perhaps a better word, ministrable, which essentially means someone who can be appointed to a ministry, a patronage job, someone who will not so to speak, scare the horses or cause outrage.

  Mitterand is often described having managed to preserve his status as being ministrable despite all sorts of mishaps in his career (e.g., working for Vichy), mainly because he knew when to jump ship. The reason this is interesting is a column I read in a British Newspaper today that described the misfortunes of the Neocons, I think it was the Financial Times, that described how numerous neocons are well, not doing well, and how Douglas Feith's inability to even find a good think tank perch.

  What is beginning to be visible is a growing sense that the Republicans have not just lost the Hill for two years, bit maybe for much longer, and that certainly the Texas bible-belt types and the Neocons are going to be toxic for years, if not decades. What this means is that those that want to be ministrable are jumping ship, and you see this with every story from senior hill staffers, or political appointee who finds something to investigate.

  Bipartisanship in DC was always a self-preservation tactic, people made sure they had friends in both camps in case there was a power shift. One of the tactics of the Republicans since 1994 was to thow out bipartisanship and say they would have a permanent majority -- and if, as a Republican, you believed this why show any bipartisan tendencies . Instead, tell the lobbying firms to fire their democrats (i.e., the K-Street Project) and run rabid. Now suddenly, the Republican majority is evaporating.

  So the rats are abandoning the ship, and on the way they are trying to show that they now "get" bipartisanship. Lets encourage them

  Permalink Saturday, April 28, 2007 02:29 PM