Chief of Staff Emanuel

Cable news is reporting that Rahm Emanuel has accepted the job for White House Chief of Staff. I go back and forth on Emanuel. He is a conservative Democrat who has sold out the party on immigration reform (encouraging Democrats to come out against it) and Iraq (the whole "Iraqis need skin in the game" comment), and he's brought a bunch of bad Blue Dogs into the caucus (one of them Tim Mahoney, was unceremoniously dumped yesterday).

On the other hand, he's a partisan warrior.

I wrote the other day that "Rahm doesn't do bipartisan," and Scarborough resoundingly echoed that sentiment. He said that appointing Rahm as COS would be like Bush appointing Tom Delay. He's basically telling the Republicans to go Cheney themselves.

I subsequently got into an email exchange with someone who argued that Rahm was was very much a bipartisan operator, who orchestrated the caucus to capitulate to bipartisanship bullshit from 2006-2008.

I replied that it's not conservatism Rahm hates, he's actually quite fond of that. It's Republicans.

When Rahm works to get legislation passed, he beats up Democrats, he doesn't reach across the aisle and try to negotiate with Republicans and make them happy.

Rahm doesn't really operate from an ideological standpoint. He sees political parties more like sports teams.

Obama feints right, and moves left in basketball. Hamsher is right that this is more about rejecting the "spirit of coming together" than rejecting conservative ideas. But having someone who's all about winning may work, as long as he's not in control of the agenda.

And I'd much rather have him as Chief of Staff than as House Speaker.

The Obama campaign has set up a website for the transition at Change.gov, so check it for the latest updates.