I was just reading over the LA Times run-down of Chairman Bill Thomas’s free-form policy aria over at the National Journal pow-wow yesterday afternoon. And they give more attention than the other dailies to the Chairman’s more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger warning that the Democrats “risked eliminating themselves from a role in the forthcoming [Social Security] debate if they played the issue strictly for short-term political gain,” in the words of the Times.
“If you start with the statement that your goal is to sabotage whatever we try to do, to try to put you in the majority [in control of Congress] in the next election,” warned Thomas, “then I am forced to try to solve the problem on a partisanship basis.”
When I read that my throat suddenly tightened. And with that familiar, panicked mix of fear and regret curling into dread, I thought, could we have squandered our chance at more of that first term lovin’ from the Republican majority and the White House?
Could this all have been a terrible mistake? The words ‘a partisanship basis’ just keep echoing through my mind.
Can Allen Boyd still put in a word for us?
