Posted on 04/10/2005 11:07:44 AM PDT by AntiGuv
WASHINGTON - The No. 3 Republican in the Senate said Sunday that embattled House Majority Leader Tom DeLay needs to answer questions about his ethics and "let the people then judge for themselves."
Sen. Rick Santorum's comments seem to reflect the nervousness among congressional Republicans about the fallout from the increased scrutiny into DeLay's way of doing business.
DeLay, R-Texas, has been dogged in recent months by reports of possible ethics violations. There have been questions about his overseas travel, campaign payments to family members and his connections to lobbyists who are under investigation.
"I think he has to come forward and lay out what he did and why he did it and let the people then judge for themselves," said Santorum, chairman of the Senate Republican Conference.
"But from everything I've heard, again, from the comments and responding to those, is everything he's done was according to the law," Santorum told ABC's "This Week."
"Now you may not like some of the things he's done," Santorum said. "That's for the people of his district to decide, whether they want to approve that kind of behavior or not."
DeLay was admonished three times last year by the House ethics committee. He has blamed his woes on Democrats, liberal interest groups and the media.
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said last week that the controversy was distracting DeLay from dealing with more pressing problems before Congress.
Santorum, however, said DeLay is "very effective in leading the House" and that "to date, has not been compromised."
A senior Democratic senator, Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, had this advice for the Republicans who control both the House and Senate: "Be careful about how closely you embrace Mr. DeLay."
Dodd cited the new rules for the ethics committee that House Republicans rammed through in the wake of DeLay's difficulties. Those rules require a bipartisan vote before an investigation can be launched. DeLay's office also helped mount a counterattack last fall against Rep. Joel Hefley (news, bio, voting record), R-Colo., who was the ethics committee chairman when it came down against DeLay.
"Unfortunately, in his particular case, there's a process that he's tried to change so they could actually reach a determination as to whether or not he's innocent or guilty of the things he's been charged with," Dodd said. "But this is not going to go away."
DeLay "becomes the poster child for a lot of the things the Democrats think are wrong about Republican leadership. As long as he's there, he's going to become a pretty good target," Dodd said on ABC.
The House leader, who took center stage in passing legislation designed to keep alive Terri Schiavo, also has found that President Bush and congressional colleagues are distancing themselves from his comments, after her death, about judges involved in her case.
"The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior," DeLay said, raising the prospect of impeaching members of a separate and independent branch of government. Later, he complained of "an arrogant and out of control judiciary that thumbs its nose at Congress and the president."
Bush, declining to endorse DeLay's comments, said Friday that he supports "an independent judiciary." He added, "I believe in proper checks and balances."
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee said last week that the judges "handled it in a fair and independent way," although he had hoped for a different result.
Democrats have said DeLay's remarks were tantamount to inciting violence against judges.
He didn't do that last time and he was elected. It is even less likely that he would need to do so this time now that he has the advantage of incumbency.
It's also why Dems in red states are shown hunting and are constantly talking about God.
You are assuming here that they wouldn't otherwise be hunting or talking about God, and instead that they only do and say what they deem necessary to win elections. If this is true, I suspect that this shallowness and lack of personal conviction is a contributing factor to the poor track record of east coast Republicans.
What do you want, a constant conservative vote in the Senate or someone that throws red meat to the base until they get voted out.
Lately Sen. Santorum has been neither. Republicans in the senate, and their judicial nominees, would be in a better situation right now if Sen. Specter had not been renominated regardless of the outcome in the general election.
Pennsylvania is not Texas or Wyoming.
With Republican politicians like these, it never will be. Merely attempting to be the lesser of two evils has never been a path to political ascendancy.
Four words: Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi. Since it's only fair to deal with scandals in chronological order, when those two have answered all the questions about their financial dealings, and have been held to the same standards as the Republicans are, then the 'Rats can start asking questions about DeLay.
What Pelosi has or has not done has nothing to do with DeLay. This "they are doing it too" garbage does not wash. If DeLay is dirty, Republicans should be the first to kick his ass out the door.
To say "We are no worse than the Democrats" is not a standard to strive for.
Except that DeLay's wife and daughter were paid from campaign contributions..not taxpayer dollars.
To hell with these run and hide their heads in the sand RINO's, they are a sad gutless lot. Why bother having a GOP majority when RINO's allow the dims to continue to set the agenda and run both houses of congress.
That was sarcasm!
True but how many members are so shameless as to spend so much on their family members? Can you find another house member who spends any where near what DeLay does?
Ethics, unlike morals, are based upon a relative standard. To say that Republicans need to hold themselves to an uncompetitive level would be absurd. Rep. DeLay should be held to the same legal standard of any other elected official. Anything beyond that is up to the voters in his congressional district.
Santorum should be calling for some judges to answer some questions. DeLay has not disobeyed the law, the judges have. Santorum's should be focused on them, not Tom DeLay.
Santorum should be calling for some judges to answer some questions. DeLay has not disobeyed the law, the judges have. Santorum's should be focused on them, not Tom DeLay.
Hey, you got that wrong. He was paying each $50,000 per year. That is $500,000. Would you have felt better if the bribes had been placed directly in DeLays personal checking account?
"Looks like DeLay's wife and daughter were on the take to the tune of half a million dollars." ~ Hank Rearend
Did you call Rush on Friday??
Rahm Emanuel Behind DeLay Hit April 8, 2005
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com [ BEGIN TRANSCRIPT ]
RUSH: Going back now to March the 17th, still doing research on this DeLay business as we did yesterday with the Los Angeles Times story on Dingy Harry Reid. Note how nobody picked that up. I mean, it ran in June of 2003; nobody cared a whit.
I brought it to everybody's attention yesterday, and outside of this show it didn't garner even a notice.
There was another story in The Hill on March 17th, and just as I said and have been saying all along, it's Democrats and their special interest groups that are organizing these attacks on DeLay's so-called ethical lapses.
The story was by Hans Nichols, and it turns out that Rahm Emanuel, who is now a member of Congress from Illinois, former Bill Clinton hit man is behind the attacks on DeLay and others for purely political purposes.
I mean, you knew a Clinton hand was behind this. "Democratic House leaders are casting about for squeaky-clean congressional candidates even if they’re long shots to challenge prominent GOP incumbents who have been tainted by news reports of their allegedly unseemly connection to lobbyists.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) strategy, still in development, aims to make ethical charges the touchstone of those campaigns and would use several high-profile local races to create a national image of corruption in the GOP-controlled House of Representatives."
This was in The Hill back on March 17th, almost a month ago.
Now, you might be saying, "Well, what's Rahm Emanuel got to do with this?"
Well, Rahm Emanuel is the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and he said, "Questions about strategy and targeting are a little bit premature, but several lawmakers and aides confirmed that Democrats are actively looking for candidates to run good-government campaigns against Bob Ney in Ohio and possibly House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas)."
So Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee strategy, and it's unfolding and the willing accomplices in the press are just falling right in line.
If the Democrats, former Clinton hit man Rahm Emanuel, want to make their strategy using "several high profile local races to create a national image of corruption in the GOP-controlled House of Representatives," then media is just going to follow right along and play the game.
Now, something else about this little paragraph here, "would use several high-profile local races to create a national image of corruption in the GOP controlled House of Representatives."
Now, we talk about a number of things on this program. One of them is the Democrat playbook being so old. There's nothing new about this. This is all they've got.
You notice the strategy of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is not to come up with an agenda that they can take to voters and say, "Here's what we're for and here's what we believe should be the agenda for America and this is why we want you to vote for us," because they can't be honest about that agenda.
They can't be honest and they know it's a losing agenda, unless the judiciary gets hold of it.
So their only hope in their own minds is to come up with this notion that the GOP Congress is corrupt.
Now, let's go back to 1994. Remember the Contract with America? A lot of people misunderstand... well, not "misunderstand," a lot of people just haven't considered one of the reasons why the Republican, "takeover", as the media loves to say, of the House in 1994 happened. It wasn't just the Contract with America although... Well, it was. The Contract with America was the central aspect of this.
Have you heard the phrase "all politics is local"? Chris Matthews' old boss Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill, Jr., the old speaker came up with that theory, "All politics is local, doesn't matter what I do in Washington as long as I get the old folks home built and a couple dams built, water treatment plants, all that kind of stuff, I'll win reelection every time because people vote their selfish interests and pocketbooks," and so forth and so on.
Well, that was largely true until 1994, and there were two things that Newt and the gang did. One: They did have a corrupt leadership of Democrats in the House at the time, who were coming off of the House bank scandal, coming off the Dan "Rosty" Rostenkowski scandal. There were all kinds of scandals.
"Fort Worthless" Jim Wright had been forced out for publishing a book that nobody bought except union members in bulk, thereby getting around the extra income rules and how you can inquire it. There was all kinds of stuff.
The post office scandal. You could walk in with a contributor's check of two grand, and you could take that to the House post office and say, "I want one 29-cent stamp," I think it was 29 cents then, "a 29-cent stamp, and I'll take the change in cash," and you could do it.
The House bank scandal, you could write checks for money you didn't have. What you were paid was irrelevant.
So all that stuff had built, but then Newt and the boys come up with the Contract, and when they did successfully for the first time in modern memory was to nationalize House races.
In other words, Aunt Esther running for Congress from South Dakota someplace ran on a national agenda, what she thought the United States government should be doing here and there, what our foreign policy ought to be, as opposed to how many old folks homes she got built in the district.
And when that happened of course that highlighted the fact that the Democrats are wrong and weak on foreign policy and bammo!
You couple that with Hillary's health care and a whole bunch of other debacles and the Republicans won the house in '94.
You've heard the Democrats say, "In order to defeat Social Security and a number of things, we're just going to duplicate []what Newt did.
We're just going to criticize everything. We're going to stand opposed to everything, and we're going to say 'no' to everything, and we're going to go after these guys the way they went after us. They call us corrupt; we're going to call them corrupt," and that's what they're doing, and this little paragraph here admits it: "Create a national image of corruption in the GOP-controlled House of Representatives."
But what they're missing is the Contract with America. The House Republicans had an agenda, and in that agenda you didn't read Democrats bad here, Democrats bad there.
You read, and became aware of positive agenda items and that's what the Democrats are missing.
They totally misunderstand why they lost in '94 and why they've lost since. They simply think they lost a PR battle and they think they didn't get their message out, and so now it's time for quid pro quo.
"Let's go after DeLay. We're gonna try to make the whole House leadership appear corrupt and we're going to go out and find squeaky clean candidates to run against them and we're going to run on a clean government agenda," and so it's hopeless. But I just knew that there had to be a Clinton bagman behind this at some point, and there is, Rahm Emanuel.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here's Bob in Crescent City, California. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hi. That was really funny. You sound like you're slurring your words a little bit today, Rush. Anyway, I think you're so wrong on this Tom DeLay and you're so skewed to the right that you do the whole country a disservice right now and you're getting to be kind of a bore. Tom DeLay has had three reprimands in Congress, and anybody that had three reprimands, if it was a Democrat, you'd be all over their back telling them that they should step down or a get rid of them just like you were all over the Clinton administration when they were in power. But now all you are is a service dog to the Bush administration. You don't even talk about the trade debt, the devaluing of the dollar or anything else like that like you were when Clinton was in office, when you were talking about the trade deficit. You don't even talk about that anymore. That was a key on your list during that and all you are is a lapdog now.
RUSH: Well, uh, Bob, you've called here with an agenda. In the first place the trade deficit, nor any deficit, has ever been a big deal with me because they all work themselves out.
CALLER: Yes, it has -- yes, it was.
RUSH: Bob, they all work their way out. But the big difference here, Bob, between you and me and the rest of you Democrats is, I have yet to be shown that DeLay is guilty of anything, as opposed to knowing Jim Wright was guilty, as opposed to knowing those in the House bank Republican and Democrat, when I was critical of both, were guilty, and all of these things.
But as I said yesterday, Bob, the big difference between you and me is that when I saw a corrupt Jim Wright, and I was doing this program then. When I saw corrupt Jim Wright, I didn't say, "Throw him out of office." I said, "Beat him at the ballot box."
When I saw a Bill Clinton that I didn't like and I thought was damaging the country, I tried to beat him at the ballot box.
You guys are afraid of the ballot box. You guys are afraid of the ballot box because you know you will not win there, so you have to motivate your troops to manage all this, gin up all this so-called corruption stuff so that people are thrown out, quit, or what have you.
Ever since Watergate, ever since Robert Bork, that's how you guys have operated. You're the ones afraid of the public.
You're the ones that are afraid of the ballot box. You're the people that are afraid to let the people be informed and vote accordingly.
I'm not. All I'm trying to do is inform people and when it's time to vote let's vote and count the votes and let the chips fall where they may. Big difference there, Bob. Might try smiling next time you call. [ END TRANSCRIPT ]
*
3-17-05 The Hill
Rahm plots '06 attack on ethics By Hans Nichols
Democratic House leaders are casting about for squeaky-clean congressional candidates even if they’re long shots to challenge prominent GOP incumbents who have been tainted by news reports of their allegedly unseemly connection to lobbyists.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) strategy, still in development, aims to make ethical charges the touchstone of those campaigns and would use several high-profile local races to create a national image of corruption in the GOP-controlled House of Representatives.
...several lawmakers and aides confirmed that Democrats are actively looking for candidates to run good-government campaigns against ...House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas). It’s fair to say that ethics is going to be a national issue in this campaign.”
....spokesman Brain Walsh said, ...“They are trying hard to create this smokescreen by obstructing the business of the American people and spinning false ethics stories, but at the end of the day they are going to have to be accountable to the voters..."
The DCCC’s decision to make ethics a mainstay of tactics in the 109th Congress and in the 2006 campaign is being welcomed by party strategists and senior aides.
...a leadership aide, said, “In 1994, ethics and abuse-of-power charges was one of the rallying cries of the Contract with America, and it worked.” ...
http://www.thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/031705/rahm.html
Yes, to me there is a big difference. If I don't want my contribution going to a candidate's family member, I don't contribute. It is not illegal and is common. If they want to get him on ethics charges for this, they should all be treated the same. That's my opinion; don't single out one guy because he cost you some seats in Texas--which has not been overturned by many appeals.
"Looks like DeLay's wife and daughter were on the take to the tune of half a million dollars. Spin that, Big Stupid Republican Government Republicans." ~ Hank Rearend
Looks like you're misinformed. Here, I'll help you get up to speed so that you don't embarrass yourself again:
Rush: Media Circles DeLay - The media's out for his scalp
Rush Limbaugh Radio Show ^ | 4-6-05 | Rush Limbaugh
Posted on 04/07/2005 11:53:53 AM EDT by Matchett-PI
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1379223/posts
LA Times: In Nevada, Reid Is the Name to Know
http://www.latimes.com/la-na-sonsday223jun23,1,1120739.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
LA Times - June 23, 2003 THE SENATORS' SONS: PART TWO
In Nevada, Reid Is the Name to Know
By Chuck Neubauer and Richard T. Cooper Times Staff Writers
Members of one lawmaker's family represent nearly every major industry in their home state. And their clients rely on his goodwill. [snip]
Rush: Media Ignores Rampant Harry Reid Corruption But Goes Nuts Over Martinez, DeLay
Rush Limbaugh Show ^ | 4-7-05 | Rush Limbaugh
Posted on 04/07/2005 11:42:50 PM EDT by Matchett-PI
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1379608/posts
DeLay's Backers Launch Offense
Washington Post ^ | April 10, 2005 | Mike Allen
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40496-2005Apr9.html
Posted on 04/09/2005 10:56:45 PM EDT by FairOpinion
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1380684/posts
What special favors did those bribes, er I mean contributions, cause DeLay to make?
Can you find another house member who spends any where near what DeLay does?..........
Oh, I bet we can! Besides, Is it the amount that is unethical or the act? If its it amount, show me were the limit is on file. If its the act, then it needs to be applied across the board because to do otherwise is to say its ok to be unethical to the tune of $300,000.00, but $400,000.00 is just over the line. Can it get any sillier?
AP spin. Read what he said and Santorum's actually supporting DeLay, but the get Santorum crowd no doubt has dozens of condemnations of him on this thread already.
"So its fair to treat campaign donations as personal income and use it for personal vacations, new cars, etc? Campaign donations are tax deductible to those that wrote the checks."
Campaign donations are NOT deductible for those who make the donations. For some strange reason, however, politicians actually have to pay many of the people who work for their capaigns; even Hillary does. Delay choe to make some of those payments to relatives, who then had to report and pay income taxes on the money they received. This is a perfectly normal, ethical transaction, unless it can be proved some kind of tax evasion was involved. The weakness of the whole case against Delay shows in the fact that there aren't any charges that this consitiuted tax evasion or illegal, improper tax free diversion of campaign funds. Delay has not treated his campaign donations as personal income.
Probably the same favors he gave the bribes that helped his election and his own salary and other benefits.
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