Fancy Footwork for the G.O.P.

The elephant seems like an apt symbol for the Republican Party--a huge, noisy beast that tramples everyone and everything in its way.

But now there is evidence that the pachyderm is more sensitive than we knew, with delicate feelings and sensors in, of all places, its toes.

Scientist have discovered that they communicate “by vibrations transmitted through the ground to exquisitely sensitive elephant toes...The ground sounds travel a greater distance than airborne calls and may help keep herd members in touch with one another across a dozen or more miles.”

They can even distinguish whether such messages come from fellow herd members or strangers--a kind of "caller ID of the wild."

All this suggests new possibilities for their human counterparts. If Dick Lugar, John Warner and Mitch McConnell want to get through to Bush and Cheney about Iraq, they may want to have their next White House conference unshod and present them with a count of Congressional defectors that will knock their socks off.

That might keep the party on its toes for ’08.