The sounds of terror from a wing of the Dem Establishment

The WP is the voice of the permanent government.  It is a partisan Democratic rag but represents the wing that expects to govern regardless of who wins the nominal elections.  As such it is more pragmatic and less doctrinaire than the NYT.  Manhattan has the private sector/finance money and can afford doctrinal purity.  DC's source of riches is government.  DC missed the current depression because government is booming.  So keep these parameters in mind and read this. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/democrats-for-romney/2011/09/16/gIQAdLmQXK_story.html?hpid=z3> .  Yes it is an opinion piece rather than the editors or the news page.  Yes the op-ed has always allowed more ideological room than the rest of the paper or the more doctrinaire NYT.  However the author is scarcely a conservative.  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana_Milbank> .  The strategy proposed amounts to partially throwing Obama under the bus in  the interests of continued rule by the usual elites.  The concept of an elite cross-party alliance of the duopoly this early in the cycle opens possibilities.  This is a trial balloon.  By itself it means nothing but IF the economy continues to tank and IF Obama's poll numbers continue their down slide this may in retrospect be seen as the opening salvo to get Mitt to jump the shark and run as a third party elite centrist.  Mitt has the money to self-finance.  He has defects [personality, religion, past record] but compared to Bloomberg each category of defect is of a lesser order [ex: fewer people have problems with a secular Mormon with a large smiling traditional family than a secular Jew from Manhattan with a stable of girl friends].  If a three way can throw the election into the House the Establishment wins regardless of whether Obama or Romney is chosen.