So Robert Novak is outraged at the White House for allowing the Base Realignment and Closure Commission to recommend the shutdown of Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota. That's a humiliation for the state's Republican Senator, John Thune, the man who dethroned Tom Daschle last fall; Thune had promised voters he'd protect Ellsworth and its 6,000 jobs.

Given that Democrats often accuse the Bush administration of placing partisan gain above the national interest, Thune's bitter pill seems a chance for a conservative like Novak to challenge that theory -- to praise the White House for taking the high road by not meddling with the nonpolitical commission's cold-eyed decision. The fact that Thune's direct personal appeals to the likes of Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney got him nowhere make for an especially compelling point.

Well, it turns out that's not quite how Novak feels:

This is a cautionary tale of what happens when politicians forget politics... [D]amage to Thune as a national fund-raiser and candidate-recruiter seems irrevocable. He has been transformed from regular to maverick. Bush might ask himself: Is closing one air base worth this?... The Bush team looked like tone-deaf, old-fashioned Republicans interested more in going by the book than winning elections.

Yeah, "the book" is for sissies. Especially when your party only holds 55 Senate seats.

In a way, Novak's oddly impassioned argument is like some hilarious inverse of Alec Baldwin's legendarily ruthless "always be closing" monologue from Glengarry Glen Ross:

You can't play in the man's game, you can't [un-]close them? Then go home and tell your wife your troubles. Because only one thing counts in this life. Get them to sign on the line which is dotted. You hear me you [expletive expletives]?... [Never] be closing. [Never]. Be. Closing.

Which raises the question: if Rove somehow does save Ellsworth, does he win a set of steak knives?