Legislative Republicans searched for the right metaphor to describe their situation regarding the state budget Tuesday.

They say they've got lots of good ideas, if the governor and majority Democrats would only listen. Gov. Chris Gregoire said she'd listen to any ideas from anyone, called for nonpartisanship, and so on, but they were skeptical that any of their ideas would get much of a hearing.

"At the end of the day," Sen. Joe Zarelli, the ranking R on Ways and Means, said, "we're passengers on the Titanic, we're not captaining it...They can ignore us, as they've chosen to do, in which case we've done our job."

No, said Rep. Richard DeBolt of Chehalils, the House minority leader: "It's more like the Lusitania."

The what? asked Zarelli.

"The Lusitania. It's the torpedoes that are going to get us," DeBolt said.

This is not the first nautical reference Zarelli has made, by the way. Last week, during the legislative preview, he said Republicans have been on "the U.S.S. Titanic."

Which, it should be noted, is not a correct reference because the Titanic was a British ship, not an American ship. Although he might have been making a reference to the very long ballad from the 1960s by Jaimie Brockett...

No, probably not.

 

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