Both sides of this conversation are troubling

[Rose Siding]

Now, to be sure, whoever is reporting this exhange could have purposely included and excluded quotes to suit some agenda and I tried to keep that in mind.

On Shays' part, I guess his crass joke about the polical system could be funny to another incumbant. I didn't laugh. That may be because I budget to make small political donations -and not to afford moments of bipartisan mirth. Or it may be because the stakes are so high that the chummy convo seems surreal.

But why in the world is Emanuel, chair of the DCCC, giving a Republican incumbant a friendly heads-up about the fight against him? Maybe it's part of a macho/threat/psych thing that I can't relate to, but it sounds more like the boast of some aristocratic big business tycoon.

Wouldn't there be tactical value in being a little less forthcoming? Wouldn't suddenly announcing a big ad buy against Shays unsettle him and earn a headline? Or might not rumors of some kind of large expenditures on a rallying outreach that he might not have prepared against be demoralizing to him?

Do they always tell each other what the fight will look like? Do they have to, legally? This bipartisan back-slapping strikes me as nothing more than part of some sort of incumbant scam.

The bad news for Rep. Christopher Shays, one of the most vulnerable Republicans in Congress, is that Democrats are planning to spend between $2 million and $2.5 million to beat him in November. The good news is that’s less than Shays had expected.

Shays joked to Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, that he would retire if Democrats gave him the $3 million they were planning to spend to defeat him, Emanuel told The Hill.

“Chris, we’d be overpaying you by a million dollars,” Emanuel shot back, according to his version of the exchange. In other words, Democratic leaders don’t think taking down Shays will cost $3 million, but pretty close to that.

Shays said that he and Emanuel later had a more serious conversation. Emanuel put both hands on Shays’s shoulders, looked him square in the face and said, “Chris, as a friend, I want to tell you that we’re going to spend two and a half million dollars against you.”

That’s what friends are for, at least in Washington.

http://www.thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/UndertheDome/072506.html

[msongs]

1. its not THEIR money, so they don't care nt