What the GOP Requires of Al Franken

Sometimes the arrogance of those who espouse the Republican cause is so breathtaking that it actually is a threat to one's health. The sentiment implied by the headline of this recent article in the Wall Street Journal is a great example.

This article came out just a day or two after Al Franken's Republican opponent, Norm Coleman, finally ran out of ways to carry on his tactic of using the molasses pace of the legal system, in this case the Minnesota courts, to deny Al Franken the right to take the U.S. Senate seat that had been obviously his for several months already.

Now. after all that, and after the long career that Franken had previously made of rightfully lambasting the type of people that would now be sitting right across the aisle from him, and despite the fact that Franken's arrival would shrink the number of those Republicans in the Senate even more, to just 40 of the 100 seats, and after those men in charge of Republican Congressional election affairs had encouraged Coleman to stretch out the Franken ordeal as long as possible even after all was plainly lost, somebody at the Wall Street Journal writes as if to say, "Forget that. What matters is that we Republicans are still in charge, and so the very first thing that Al Franken must do is to start trying to win us over."

What! Before Franken has even walked into the U.S. Capitol, found out where the U.S. Senators hang out, found out what the rules and customs are, found out where his office is, found out whether the toilet and the light switches work, gotten his staff all picked out and in place, and, above all, refreshed his memory on what he meant to do when he got there, the very first thing he must do is to win over a bunch of guys who deeply resent every second that he is on the premises?

It is hard to imagine a more futile and ridiculous task.

First and last it would be beyond even Al Franken's comedic skills to win those guys over. Those 40 remaining G.O.P. Senators are -- for the most part -- a group of wolves that run all together in a tightly knit, snarling, and ever-snapping pack, and they would see Al Franken only as a large hare that they would like to bring down and tear asunder at the earliest opportunity, especially in light of the attitude that he had displayed so constantly toward their side of things.

But everything depends on what approach Franken decides to take. Most likely he intends to keep a low profile for a while, as befits any newcomer to the Senate. But I hope that doesn't mean that eventually he will surrender most of his earlier good instincts, in favor instead of catering to the well-known clubbiness of that chamber.

If I were Al Franken I wouldn't be too excited about entering that "august body," if what he had been up until this moment ever meant anything to him, and the biggest threat to that would be the gang of malcontents who so smugly wait for him to try to win them over. Even in the best of cirumstances, the U.S. Senate is not a good place to keep up one's spiritual health.