The American Spectator

For months, Republicans in Florida and Washington have been looking for some way to push Harris over the side. Now, with her ongoing campaign problems and the MZM scandal, which will dog her, some see an opening they hope they can talk advantage of.

p> FRIST AND TEN br> Any questions about where Senate Majority Bill Frist sees himself in a few years is being answered very quietly both inside and outside the Beltway. /p>

The two clearest examples were played out this past week, where according to Senate leadership sources, Frist engineered the new 45-day review timeline between the U.S government and Dubai Ports World to address security concerns as the UAE firm takes over major operations at five U.S. ports.

Part of the deal Frist fashioned requires that DP World create an American subsidiary that would function independently of executives in Dubai, and that during the 45 day waiting period an American citizen would serve as the chief security officer during that period, the company said.

Frist’s leadership on the port issue takes yet another White House miscue out of the hands of Democrats, who have become increasingly eager to beat Republicans of all stripes over their respective heads with every communications failure coming out of 1600 Pennsylvania.

“At some point, someone in the White House has to look at the communications shop and just say, ‘Enough is enough. We need professional help,’” says a former Bush White House staffer. “It wasn’t great in the first term, and it’s just gotten progressively worse. A number of us have pointed this out, but the folks at the top just don’t get it.”

Instead, the senior White House communications folks lash out even at folks who are helping them outside of the building, whether it be Frist or Boehner staff or former Administration types working behind the scenes.

“They [current White House communications staff] don’t want the blame, and they don’t want to share the credit. I hate to compare our team to the Clinton White House, but if the Clinton team had blown the Dubai port story, the deck chairs would have been re-arranged,” says another former White House aide.

As for Frist and his team up in the Senate, they have to be looking at this latest White House debacle and wondering how many more lives they have before their quiet political maneuvers run out of gas. That may be another reason why Frist remains a hard charger out on the road, fundraising and clearly campaigning for a higher office.

Early last week — on the day that he was announcing his opposition to the Dubai deal as it was then structured — Frist was on the West Coast, including a fundraiser in San Francisco with the city’s five or so Republicans. According to those in attendance, Frist was on top of his game, focused and clearly looking ahead to 2008. While the fundraiser was intended to seed money to his VolPAC leadership account, Frist isn’t sitting back and letting Sens. John McCain and George Allen sop up all the GOP backing for the nomination race that begins in earnest nine months from now.