Photo by samdupont.

Nice message, terrible timing.

Today, the D.C. Republican Party sent a letter to D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton in which it encouraged her “to work with the new Republican Congress, build a working relationship with the new leadership and reach out to freshmen House Republicans toward a goal of obtaining DC Voting Rights.”

In theory, this is a modest and intelligent proposal — instead of simply assuming that every Republican on the Hill is reflexively against D.C. voting rights, Norton should seek them out and respectfully plead her case. But given the events that have transpired over the last three weeks, it seems, well, a little tone-deaf to what the District is dealing with.

Since the new Republican Congress was sworn in, it stripped Norton of her House vote, floated a congressional exemption from local gun laws, introduced legislation banning the use of local taxpayer dollars for abortions and proposed $210 million in spending cuts that would prove disastrous for the city. Sure, one Republican charged with dealing with District affairs is a moderate with local roots, but the other is an unknown Tea Party partisan from South Carolina.

And today alone, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) announced that he would seek to revive a school voucher program for the District and a large group of conservative House members declared their intentions to push for a ban on same-sex marriage in the District.