Posted on 12/03/2004 6:24:52 AM PST by buddyholly
Earlier this year, Tom DeLay correctly diagnosed the disease that infects his congressional majority. "If 1994 was the year we stopped thinking like a permanent minority," DeLay told Republicans gathered for a February party retreat in Philadelphia, "2004 is the year we start thinking like a permanent majority: unified, aggressive, rightfully confident of victory." DeLay, of course, thought permanent-majority status would be a good thing for the GOP, but nine months later he's become the symbol of a party corrupted by its lock on power. When House Republicans voted last month to allow members who have been indicted to keep their leadership positions—a decision that ought to be remembered as the "DeLay rule"—political writers from David Brooks to E.J. Dionne to John Podhoretz howled that Republicans had finally completed their slow transformation into the entrenched, arrogant, and sleazy Democratic majority they defeated in 1994.
The vote on the DeLay rule has settled a little-noticed debate, which predated the November election, over the nature of the GOP's corruption: Was it procedural or substantive? Liberals tended to argue the former, as James Traub did in an essay for the New York Times Magazine in October. By ignoring procedural and democratic niceties, Traub argued, the Republican leadership "has been able to convert smaller minorities into more effective control—and more extreme policies." Conservatives, with some exceptions, worried more about ideological corruption, about the betrayal of the ideals that catapulted Republicans to power. What's the use of a Republican Congress, some wondered, if it spends like a Democratic one?
Conveniently, the DeLay vote has enabled liberals and conservatives to agree: Are congressional Republicans out-of-touch plutocrats, concerned only with using the power of incumbency to perpetuate their rule? Or are they ideological traitors who have forsaken the principles that got them elected in the first place? The answer is yes. In 1994, Republicans ran on both substance and procedure. They wanted to change what Congress worked on, but they also wanted to change the way it worked. Many liberals thought the 1994 Congress had a salutary effect on the institution, but over time many of the reforms it instituted have been repealed or weakened, including term limits for the Speaker of the House and committee chairmen, and bans on corporate junkets and lobbyist-paid meals. The DeLay rule is just the latest example.
The liberal and conservative critiques of GOP corruption have always been interdependent. Take pork. If you like federal spending but dislike Republicans, you tend to criticize pork-barreling as an attempt to perpetuate incumbents' hold on office. Likewise, if you loathe government dollars but like Republicans, you attack pork projects as the abandonment of small-government principle. Either way, you're criticizing the same thing.
Examining the campaigns of the two "giant-killers" of 1994 and 2004, George Nethercutt and John Thune, illustrates the Republican transformation. Nethercutt beat Tom Foley, then the Speaker of the House, by running as a citizen-outsider, and Eastern Washington voters were embarrassed about being on the receiving end of so many government contracts. "It's basically pork. Even though we live here, it just isn't right," one voter told Time magazine. Ross Perot campaigned against Foley before the election and asked voters at a rally, "Are you for sale?" This year, Thune attacked Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle for not "making South Dakota a priority," meaning not bringing home enough bacon. Thune blasted Daschle for not pushing through an energy bill that would bring South Dakota more ethanol subsidies. After the election, he told the Los Angeles Times that his victory was a mandate for "getting things done." Republicans used to be opposed to a government that got things done.
The speed with which Republicans have forgotten their "core values," as David Brooks put it after the vote on the DeLay rule, has been shocking. Earlier this year, a Boston Globe article made a few comparisons between the 1993-94 Congress that Newt Gingrich ousted and the one now ending. The Republican Congress added 3,407 pork barrel projects to appropriation bills in conference committee, compared to 47 for 1994, the last year Democrats held both houses. The Republican Congress allowed only 28 percent of the bills on the floor to be amended, "barely more than half of what Democrats allowed in their last session in power in 1993-94." The number of nonappropriations bills "open to revision has dropped to 15 percent."
Now that the Republicans have turned into the Democrats, it will be interesting to learn whether the opposite happens, too. If the majority party continues its decline, expect more and more Democrats to ask a famous Republican question. Where's the outrage?
These were GOP rules that were changed because the new Democrat tactic is to get some nutjob liberal prosecutor to start indicting members of the Republican Leadership. The Democrats do NOT have any such rules.
Tom DeLay is one of the most generous members of Congress. He's taken in countless foster children. How many foster children has Nancy Pelosi taken in? Or Ted Kennedy?
bump
So now we're no better than the Democrats. Oh goody.
As soon as they enacted the rule, the prosecutor decided to drop the charges... why?? because they were baseless and wouldn't accomplish the desired result for the Democrats which was to GET DELAY. So now see, the rule itself stops the crime of baseless charges BEFORE it's committed... Job well done IMHO> And, yes we are better than the Democrats because we outsmarted them on this one.
So now we're no better than the Democrats. Oh goody.
It wouldn't matter who the Repubs nominated the loser lefties would find a way to bring them up on ethics charges or some other bogus charge. It had to be done.
That's really all this boils down to.
Just like the terrorists, we have to fight the fight on their level. As long as they continue to lie, cheat, steal(or attempt to steal) elections, slander Republicans, use scare tactics on the elderly and minorities, etc, etc, etc, Republicans should do whatever it takes to defeat them. The Dems have shown a propensity for using the legal system to further goals that the people vote against, so Republicans have to write laws to protect against that type of tactic.
"As soon as they enacted the rule, the prosecutor decided to drop the charges... why?? because they were baseless and wouldn't accomplish the desired result for the Democrats which was to GET DELAY. So now see, the rule itself stops the crime of baseless charges BEFORE it's committed... Job well done IMHO> And, yes we are better than the Democrats because we outsmarted them on this one."
I believe it would be a good idea to have a Congressional investinvestigation of that prosecutor. Perhaps, a series of hearings would air some of his own diry laundry.
Would you want them to? Barney Frank?
I don't think so.
I totally agree. Additionally, misuse of public funds demands a penalty; perhaps a fine equal to the amount of wasted taxpayer funds, termination, disbarrment, and jail time.
Strat, do you have a source for that info.. I've only 'heard' otherwise, but would like the hard facts. Reportedly, Earle has a history of politically motivated prosecutions... be they against Dems or Pubs, it's wrong IMO. He's moved from prosecution to persecution, and that's a big problem with lefty lawyers. The laws mean nothing to them when they have an agenda to push.
"In addition, Earle is regarded as one of the best DAs in the nations by his fellow DAs."
Since when do DAs write op-eds attacking people (Delay) in the NY Times?
This guy is a political hack. Big time.
Well, without the hard facts, I don't trust any Democrat to decide what is ethical. Plus, anything coming from the NYT is questionable in it's accuracy, and has pretty much zero credibility with me anyway.
The NYT's would print that the world is flat as a fact if the Democrats wanted them to.
I like Tom Delay, and find no need to object to his tactics in hand to hand combat with the Taliban wing in Congress. Dems always expect someone ELSE to play by the rules, and they have plenty of useful idiots in the press to give *them* a pass.
No.. it's time for hardball.. Heck, it's time for big balls. Get ready to rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrumble!! :)
We love Tom down in Galveston County and invite the rest of you out to meet him at the 2005 Galveston County Lincoln Day Dinner
So check out www.lincolndaydinner.com and www.galvestoncountygop.com . Thanks
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