THE GOP GROUND GAME SPOKE A LONG TIME AGO

Noonan writes about one really outstanding column per month but she outdid herself on 10/28 when she wrote an essay about how many important people in Washington thought the GOP was a disgrace and should lose. In part:

When the meeting was over a woman walked up to me. She spoke of what was going wrong in Washington--the preoccupation with money, a lack of focus on the essentials, and the relentless dynamic of politics: first thing you do when you get power is move to keep power. And after a while you don't have any move but that move.

I said I thought the Republicans would take it on the chin in 2006, and that would force the beginning of wisdom. She surprised me. She was after all a significant staffer giving all her energy to helping advance conservative ideas within the Congress. "Yes," she said, in a quiet, deadly way. As in: I can't wait. As in: We'll get progress only through loss.

That's a year ago, from the Hill.

This is two weeks ago, from a Bush appointee: "I hope they lose the House." And one week ago, from a veteran of two GOP White Houses: "I hope they lose Congress." Republicans this year don't say "we" so much.

What is behind this? A lot of things, but here's a central one: They want to fire Congress because they can't fire President Bush.

Republican political veterans go easy on ideology, but they're tough on incompetence. They see Mr. Bush through the eyes of experience and maturity. They hate a lack of care. They see Mr. Bush as careless, and on more than Iraq--careless with old alliances, disrespectful of the opinion of mankind. "He never listens," an elected official who is a Bush supporter said with a shrug some months ago. Along the way the president's men and women confused the necessary and legitimate disciplining of a coalition with weird and excessive attempts to silence Republican critics. They have lived in a closed system. They now want to open it but don't know how. Listening is a habit; theirs has long been to suppress.

In the Republican base, that huge and amorphous thing, judgments are less tough, more forgiving. But there too things have changed.

Noonan is one of the many who are glad the Republicans lost, and if you read the conservative magazines you will sense the same thing. Cutting to the chase: We fired a guy who we think stinks. We also fired his pals who stink along with him. Upside? The Democrats will do little damage to the economy because the Blue Dogs combined with the Republicans won't let them. The damage, if it comes, will come from "war crimes" trials (already started per Maxed Out) or an impeachment effort. The Republicans don't have a monopoly of not learning from the past. But let's not kid ourselves, losing the Senate was a major event. This may mark the end of judges who use the Constitution as a guide to interpret the law; the appointment of Alcee Hastings to lead the intelligence committee virtually guarantees that all spies will be killed because he will engineer it. If I was an Iraqi friend of the U.S. I'd cut and run while I still could.