Friendly with Rove, Donna Brazile now cozies up to Santorum

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: No 'Red' or 'Blue' in the Green Room
By ANNE E. KORNBLUT
Published: December 4, 2005
WASHINGTON

DONNA BRAZILE calls them green room conversions.

One of her more recent went something like this: Ms. Brazile, the garrulous Democratic strategist, found herself in the waiting room - known in the world of television talk shows as the green room - with Senator Rick Santorum, the conservative Republican from Pennsylvania who campaigned to defeat her candidate, Al Gore, in the 2000 presidential campaign.

The two, awkwardly thrown together with little to do except contemplate the pastry spread, started to chat politely.

"Santorum and I, we're both Catholic, we're both from large families and we just struck up a conversation that ended up continuing, and I went over to his office one morning and had breakfast," Ms. Brazile said, ticking off the issues, from AIDS to faith-based institutions, on which the two have consulted since. "I have met a lot of people I would normally not even talk to," said Ms. Brazile, a regular on the talk show circuit. "Somehow in the green room you put all that aside. It's time for small chatter."

In a town full of back-room deals and strange bedfellows, green rooms create some of the most surprising arrangements of all. For a few minutes before every talk show, in a small corner of every television studio in Washington, partisans and journalists who are sworn enemies in public share a moment of peace. Sometimes they swap phone numbers. Occasionally they leak information. At least one man met his future wife....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/04/fashion/sundaystyles/04GREEN.html?oref=login