In Contempt

In typical Washington-elite fashion, David Ignatius dismisses prosecutor-gate since everyone knows "U.S. Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president, and he can fire whomever he wants". But his GOP-talking points on this issue weren't enough to prevent Ignatius from noticing something else about the matter:

The Bush political operatives have become the people the Republicans once warned the country against -- a club of insiders who seem to think that they're better than other folks. They are so contemptuous of government and the public servants who populate it that they have been unable to govern effectively. They are a smug, inward-looking elite that thinks it knows who the good guys are by the political labels they wear.

(snip)

After Katrina, it became clear that the public wanted a change. Americans want to be confident that those in charge of the country's business are members of what I call "the party of competence," whatever their political affiliation. The anguish of Iraq deepened that message, and the 2006 congressional elections codified it. But the Bush administration didn't get it. The purge at Justice came after the November election blowout. They acted as if they were still on a roll.

True to hypocritical form, believing the rules and rhetoric they spout to manipulate others shouldn't be or won't be measured against their own performance, Republican Washington is the mirror image of that which it campaigned against, and which existed only within the fever swamps of its own mind.