One of the central themes of George W. Bush's campaign for president in 2000 was a pledge to "change the tone in Washington" from the partisan rancor of the Clinton years to the kind of bipartisanship the Texas Governor claimed to have achieved in Austin.

As we predicted shortly after Bush's inauguration, his White House has turned out to be exceptionally partisan, even by the toxic standards of the 1990s. And as an article in yesterday's Denver Post put it: "Acrimony exported from Washington is increasingly infecting state and local governance."

Exhibit A, ironically, is the president's home state of Texas: Now that they have a majority in both chambers of the state legislature, Republicans tried to overturn the Congressional map approved after the last census to give the GOP five or six new U.S. House seats. This blatant power grab, which Texas House Democrats thwarted with their famous flight to Oklahoma, was being orchestrated, of course, out of Washington, by longtime Bush ally House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Allegations are swirling that a frustrated DeLay and his staff may have gone way over the line in trying to get federal Homeland Security Department officials as well as Texas law enforcement agencies to track down those Democrats and keep the gerrymander alive.

A somewhat smaller post-redistricting coup was actually pulled off in Colorado, allegedly with direct encouragement by White House political advisor Karl Rove, though its implementation has been at least temporarily halted by New Democrat Attorney General Ken Salazar.

In fact, DeLay's weird efforts to run the Texas legislature and Rove's intervention in Colorado are but two examples of a national conservative effort toward jihad politics around the country. One of the main Washington-based zealots is DeLay's comrade-in-arms in many partisan battles (including the "K Street Strategy" to force lobbyists to hire only Republicans or forfeit access to congressmen), Americans for Tax Reform president and super-lobbyist Grover Norquist.

Norquist, whose Wednesday meetings of corporate and conservative lobbyists are the closest thing around to a transmission belt for Republican orthodoxy and White House orders, had this nice thing to say to the Denver Post about bipartisanship: "We are trying to change the tone in state capitals, and turn them toward bitter nastiness and partisanship." He wasn't kidding. But Norquist did try to get funny by relaying an "axiom of House Republicans," that "bipartisanship is another name for date rape." That's disgusting on so many levels that it ought to convince the Secret Service to put Norquist on the "no entry" list at the White House from now on.

In fact, the president and his advisors need to repudiate their bosom buddies Norquist and DeLay for their endlessly vicious partisanship, or shut up, once and for all, with the claims that they wish to "change the tone" for the better in Washington -- or anywhere else.

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