The current political cleansing of Washington, D.C., might be called a conspiracy if its perpetrators were not so boastful in interviews and on the Internet. This sort of boasting, by either conservatives or liberals, is usually and happily short-lived.

The “K Street Project” is a campaign headed by Grover Norquist, a right-wing Republican operator long associated with Newt Gingrich. His goal is to get rid of any Democrats in the lobbying firms, special interest groups, trade associations and law firms with offices centering on K Street in downtown Washington and to replace them with conservative Republicans. Lobbying organizations increasingly plan and promote – and even write – legislation.

Mr. Norquist, founder and president of the anti-tax lobbying group Americans for Tax Reform, calls his campaign “Street Cleaning: Moving ’em Up or Out!” His Web site describes the K Street Project as “nonpartisan research of political affiliation, employment, background and political donations of members of Washington, D.C.’s premier lobbying firms, trade associations, and industries.”

He goes further in interviews. Elisabeth Drew quoted him in the New York Review of Books as saying he wants the project to include not just the top jobs on K Street, but “all of them -including secretaries.”

She reported that the project showed its teeth last year when the Motion Picture Association of America hired as its new head Dan Glickman, a former Democratic congressman from Kansas and secretary of agriculture in the Clinton administration. House Republicans promptly removed from a pending bill $1.5 billion in tax relief for the motion picture industry. And the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call reported that Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa, had begun “discussing what the consequences are for the movie industry.”

The Washington Monthly reported in 2003 that Sen. Santorum met privately every Tuesday with a group of Republican lobbyists to discuss job openings in the lobbying industry and how to fill them with conservative Republicans. The results of such meetings, including a similar one in the House, show up in daily postings on the K Street Project Web site, as well as listings of recent appointments, with data on past political jobs and political contributions.

Implied reprimands sometimes seem to intimidate lobbying organizations. The project reported that DirecTV had hired Andrew Reinsdorf as vice president for governmental affairs, noting that he had made financial contributions to the presidential campaigns of Rep. Richard Gephardt, D-Mo., and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. When DirecTV was asked for comment, a spokesman replied merely, “We’ll pass. Thanks.”

Mr. Norquist’s campaign may seem like a plan for perpetual conservative Republican rule. But some old Washington hands, who have seen administrations come and go, doubt that the project can succeed in the end. They predict that law firms and trade associations will mostly continue to hire a mixture of Democrats and Republicans, to maintain contacts regardless of which party is in control.

The Republican administration is now beginning to show the strains and pressures that arise from prolonged control, amid charges of scandal and corruption much like the troubles that helped bring about the end of some Democratic administrations. Lobbyists tend to prepare for possible change by balancing their staffs and contributions.