Republicans I Pledge To Work With

• Abe Lincoln

• Teddy Roosevelt

• Manuel Azaña Díaz

WHILE we're on the subject, I'd like to remind any Democratic Presidential candidates who are considering announcing similar lists that some of us are old enough to have cast one or more hopeful votes for centrist Democrats, and to have witnessed, as respective results, 1) the consolidation of Bircher control of the Republican party and 2) that whole shebang hurtling into the most colossal example of mass mental derangement since the Cultural Revolution, resulting in, variously, Presidential impeachment over a blow job, a Supreme Court decision that, given the political makeup of the Supreme Court, voters of the opposite persuasion had no right to expect their votes to count (offer void if conditions reversed), the lapdog press, President Moron, Vice President Ripper, and the spectacle of critter-pated spokescreatures for the Party of Patriotism sliming the service, heroism, even, of a Presidential candidate because they didn't like his politics.

We might therefore suggest that "working with Tom Coburn" is something best left to the mental health profession, and that the Senior Sinecured Senator from Indiana, the respected foreign policy voice whose career spans respected foreign policy decisions from Vietnam to Iraq, can be counted on to spare no public vapidity while voting with the extremist "wing" of his party 8 out of 10 times. One need not "find a way" to work with Lugar, or Warner, except perhaps in a Cloakroom sense; just stick your net out downstream and wait for them to float by on the current. For the rest, a quick skimming should do the trick, just after dynamiting the pond.