The ‘Sherpas’ of the Beltway

Retired Senator Jon Kyl is now a Sherpa. As The New York Times writes, “In Washington, a Sherpa is an informal but widely known term for a nominee’s guide to the political tundra in the Senate.” Widely known inside the Beltway, perhaps. But although the Times lists Sherpa several times in a search for the term over this last month, if you go back to 2009, the year of Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court, Sherpa gets hardly any play.

I first heard the term in this sense only this pas...