Of Course, He Isn't A Baron Or King Or Anything

Just a lifelong Republican Congressman who's fed up with his party:

Rep. Wayne Gilchrest, a maverick Republican from Maryland, endorsed Illinois Democratic Sen. Barack Obama for president in an interview Wednesday with WYPR, Baltimore's National Public Radio station.

Gilchrest, who lost a primary campaign and is retiring from Congress, has already endorsed the Democrat running for his seat, Frank Kratovil. Justifying his endorsement of Obama, Gilchrest said that "we can't use four more years of the same kind of policy that's somewhat haphazard, which leads to recklessness."

Obama and his running mate, Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), "have the breadth of experience. I think they're prudent. They're knowledgable."

Granted, there's no "de" in his name, so this won't garner any kind of media attention.

UPDATE: The fact that Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell and James Baker are tacitly endorsing Obama's foreign policy mindset is notable as well.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Five former U.S. secretaries of state said on Monday the next American administration should talk to Iran, a foe President George W. Bush has generally shunned as part of an "axis of evil."

Engaging Iran is important because Washington's military options against Tehran are unsatisfactory, said the diplomats, who worked for Republican and Democratic administrations.

The five -- Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright, Warren Christopher, James Baker and Henry Kissinger -- all said they favored talking to Iran as part of a strategy to stop Tehran's development of a nuclear weapons program.

Do they think Obama is elitist, though? Because THAT would get them on the teevee.

But The Surge Is Working

Getting the media to write a new story is about as easy as turning around a supertanker, but they really need to follow McClatchy's lead and look at Iraq in a new way:

After months of declining violence, February is certain to be the third straight month to see increases in the numbers of Baghdad residents killed in car bombings and suicide attacks.

....Monday, a suicide car bomber drove his car into the Baghdad residence of a prominent leader of the Anbar Salvation Council....Later, Sheik Ali Hathem al Suleiman al Duleimy, who was injured in the attack, went on Iraqi TV and declared war against his enemies. He said that his militia, many of whose members are paid by the United States, no longer would allow the U.S. or Iraqi government to interfere with its work.

This, of course, is part of the ebb and flow of violence over there which is a consequence of an uncertain political situation, and will continue this way no matter what "surge" we employ. On that political front, things are getting unquestionably worse:

The speaker of Iraq's fragmented parliament threatened Tuesday to disband the legislature, saying it is so riddled with distrust it appears unable to adopt the budget or agree on a law setting a date for provincial elections.

Disbanding parliament would prompt new elections within 60 days and further undermine Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's shaky government, which is limping along with nearly half of the 40 Cabinet posts vacant.

The disarray undermines the purpose of last year's U.S. troop "surge" — to bring down violence enough to allow the Iraqi government and parliament to focus on measures to reconcile differences among minority Sunnis and Kurds and the majority Shiites. Violence is down dramatically, but political progress languishes.

(Got the whole "undermines the purpose" thing right in the third paragraph! Nice job, AP.)

And as we've seen, violence is ticking back up in the midst of that languishing.

One thing we know is that the Republicans will not be blurring the lines on Iraq as we head into November. Their standard bearer John McCain thinks it's insulting to one's intelligence to question how long we're going to be spinning our wheels in Iraq. Actually, what's insulting is suggesting that everything's going so well over there when there is no progress whatsoever. But the Republicans are making the same bet on Iraq that they've always made. Yesterday, they purged their party of one of its few anti-war voices, giving a clear choice to the electorate in November:

(Wayne) Gilchrest is one of the few Republican House members who has voted against the war in Iraq several times, and his unwillingness to live in GOP fantasyland when it comes to this issue proved his undoing. By the time November comes around, it should be very, very clear to voters that there's one party that wants to continue the war regardless of circumstance, and another that wants to reassess our security priorities.

I will absolutely take our chances in that debate.