Ciao, John Bolton ....

Is John any relation to Officer Joe Bolton?

 

No Boom. Officer Joe was a good guy.

 

Give it up, JR. He chooses not to believe what he chooses not to believe. And, anyway, like I said above, completely in keeping with the people who hired him.
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002075.php

My nightmare? The inexcusable Joe Lieberman takes the job and Jodi Rell appoints a Republican to replace him, throwing the Senate the other way. If she does, I hopes she picks that poor sap who ran in the last election and was ignored by all the bigtime Republican donors who flocked to Joe's banner.

 

Nah, Joe gets to be the most important guy in the Senate for at least the next two years. He'll chair the Homeland Security Cmte and when it comes to party line votes, the Dems and the GOP are going to come to him, hat in hand. You think Joe wants to give that up?

 

I'm not sure what Joe and his ego will do from moment to moment. And he is not the most important guy in the Senate for the next two years. His people would like to believe that but, absent any improvement on the ground, or a sudden dawning of intellect at 1600 Pennsylvania, nobody with his positions on Iraq is going to be politically viable this time next year.

 

I am not talking about his political viability. I am talking that both sides know that he is a threat to vote with the GOP on any issue at any time. So both sides have a vested interest in sucking up to him. He is not going to give that up.

 

Maybe not, but on the important stuff, he's to the right of, among other people, Chuck Hagel, as was demonstrated on TV this weekend. He keeps that up, and given the number of GOP Senate seats up for grabs in 2008, and the hell-for-leather sprint away from this administration that is going to be the result of those seats being in play, Joe's time as the deciding vote on anything is going to be pretty short, IMHO.

 

Well, John Murtha doesn't have to look very far to his right to see Chuck Hagel. Most of the Democratic caucus is to the right of Hagel.

I agree that Joe time in the spotlight as the deciding vote in the Senate doesn't last past 2008 and after that his viability as a national political figure (as opposed to his viability as the parochial Senator from CT) is probably done. But if he took the U.N. job, he would give up that short time in the spotlight and be unemployed come January 2009. I just don't see him taking that route.

 

I think his ego might be tempted by the platform.
"Most of the Democratc caucus.."
Your Holiness, now, really.