Here's your chance to disassociate yourself from Tom Delay, and to condemn recent House rule changes to protect the Majority Leader. This is the thread, folks.

Details. In a nut shell.

Delay is about to get indicted by a Texas grand jury. 11 years ago, Republicans pushed a rule through the house to prevent Congressmen from holding leadership positions if they've been indicted. Democrats went along with it, because it was the right thing to do. Now that the Republicans are back in power, they're flip-flopping. Pure hypocricy, and it's eventually going to cost the party.

Delay is about to get indicted by a Texas grand jury. 11 years ago, Republicans pushed a rule through the house to prevent Congressmen from holding leadership positions if they've been indicted. Democrats went along with it, because it was the right thing to do. Now that the Republicans are back in power, they're flip-flopping. Pure hypocricy, and it's eventaully going to cost the party.
In that case, I denounce the move. But I'm not really a Republican either. :hmm:

delay shouldnt be protected.

the rule they changed went back to a rule they created during the contract with america era with newt gingrich. it certainly does appear as though they are doing this to protect him and that is wrong.

they shouldnt have changed the rule, you dont change ethics when it suits your needs, other wise they're not ethics, they're just "guidelines".

but it should be said there were plenty of republicans that were against it so i really dont hope we dont have more broad brush stroke painting of ALL republicans as neocons without a conscience changing their own rules to save themselves and all this generalizing bull****.

many repubs hate that SOBs guts.
om DeLay is bleeding and he doesn't even know it.

This week, House Republicans bent their accountability rules to protect their majority leader from what they feel is a partisan Texas prosecutor. But they hated the whole exercise. They sat in a conference room hour after hour wringing their hands. Only a few members were brave enough to stand up and say they shouldn't bend the rule. But afterward, many House Republicans came up to those members and said that secretly they agreed with them.

Somewhere in the psychology of the caucus something shifted. That ineffable thing called political capital began seeping away from DeLay. Someday people will look back and say this could be the moment when his power begins to ebb.

It's shifted because many House Republicans know that DeLay has been playing close to the ethical edge for years. They've noticed the number of scandals - the latest involving lobbying fees for some Indian casinos - that trace back to DeLay cronies. They still remember that delicious feeling of possibility when they arrived in Washington and vowed they would not turn into the corrupt old majority they had come to replace. They know Delay symbolizes their descent from that reformist ideal.

Why didn't more members get up and say something against DeLay?

There are several reasons. The most obvious is self-interest. DeLay and the leadership can take away your hopes of getting a chairmanship or a vote on your bill.

But there's also the fact that most House Republicans like DeLay. It's always important to remember that most of the mythology that surrounds the Hammer is total nonsense. He is not the behind-the-scenes power who controls the House. Speaker Dennis Hastert controls the House and feels free to overrule DeLay.

He is not the vicious strongman who terrorizes members and reduces them to tears to get their vote. Roy Blunt and Eric Cantor are the whips, not DeLay, and they are anything but vicious.

He's not even a terror to his peers. He can be firm, but he and his staff are noted for their graciousness. Connecticut moderate Chris Shays, who has tangled with DeLay more than anyone else, believes that DeLay is actually uncomfortable with personal confrontations. He's much better at offering carrots than wielding sticks.

In fact, DeLay has been a thoughtful majority leader. He rarely keeps the House in session beyond its scheduled hours. That means members, especially those with young families or marginal seats, can spend more time in their districts. That is deeply appreciated.

Finally, House Republicans did not rise up to denounce DeLay because while they know he represents some of the political tendencies they came to Washington to reform, none of them is pure enough to cast the first stone. They've all voted for the big deficits they vowed to combat. They've all watched the walls between the public servants and the private lobbyists get washed away.

If Republicans are going to recover the reformist spirit, they're going to have to do more than lessen the influence of Tom DeLay.

But let's face it, the problem starts there. Tom DeLay is a scandal waiting to happen. He casts himself as the enemy of Washington, but he's really a conventional (if effective) pol who wants to use dollars to entrench power. He represents the greatest danger the Republicans face, bossism. He wants to be the G.O.P.'s Boss Tweed.

Deep in the recesses of their minds, many Republicans know that voters around the country may never hear of Tom DeLay, but if the Republicans become just another self-dealing power clique, there will be hell to pay.

You could begin to hear a slight shift in Republican voices yesterday. Several were looking around and noticing that they have a very good and effective leadership team even without DeLay. Hastert has gone from being obscure to being beloved. Roy Blunt is efficient and smooth. Eric Cantor of Virginia is a rising star.

When people start gossiping about what the world would be like if you were gone - as Republicans are now starting to do with DeLay - you are in the first stages of political decline. It means that members start regarding you with a little less awe, and they start regarding your potential successors with a little more.

He doesn't face an immediate threat. But the next time a scandal licks up against him, DeLay will find his support is not as strong as he thought it would be. He'll turn around and find that his caucus has remembered its core values.

http://www.professorbainbridge.com/2004/11/powerline_short.html
Ok, here is one of you right wingers saying the same thing;
As a card-carrying member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, I remain disappointed -nay, appalled - at the deafening silence coming from folks like Hugh Hewitt and the Cornerites with respect to the shady maneuvers the House GOP pulled this week to protect Tom Delay. Yet, perhaps silence is better than obfuscation, to which Hindrocket resorted:

The practice of procuring politically-motivated indictments is another sad aspect of today's degraded political scene. The House of Representatives is to be commended for putting the Democrats on notice that the House will not be intimidated by the Democrats' repellent tactics.

Setting aside the minor factual error (it was the House GOP caucus, not the House as a whole, that changed the rule), Hindrocket wholly failed to come to grips with the real issue that I and others have been raising. In contrast, John Podhoretz gets it:

What is the great Democratic hope over the next four years? The answer isn't Hillary. ... There is no great Democratic hope in the Democratic Party.

No, the Democrats' great hope is Republican arrogance.

We've just gotten an unfortunate taste of that arrogance in the astonishing decision of the House Republican caucus to change a key rule for the purpose of protecting a single powerful GOP House leader. The original rule was written in direct response to the arrogance of the 1980s and '90s, when decades of Democratic Party rule in the House led its leaders to believe they could skirt the bounds of legality with impunity.

After all, who was there to punish them?

Well, it turned out the Republicans were there — the Republicans and the voters. The Republican takeover of the House in 1994 was due in no small measure to the GOP caucus's success in making a national scandal out of Democratic misuse of power for personal ends and personal gain.

One way the Republicans did that was by pointing out how insouciant Democrats were about accusations of improper, unethical and even illegal conduct — and by promising they would hold themselves to a higher standard. Thus, in 1993, the GOP caucus in the House passed a rule that said any party leader indicted for a criminal offense would immediately be stripped of his rank.

It is, of course, that very rule that has now been replaced with a toothless requirement for House GOP leaders to vote on whether the indicted leader should step down from his leadership post. But what House GOP member will dare vote against the Hammer? It's precisely for that reason that you need a prophylactic rule like the one Newt Gingrich got passed back in '93.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/20/opinion/20brooks.html?oref=login&hp

no doubt we will get excuses excuses. We justify it by saying it was not as bad as.{fill in blank**.


Its party over principle plane and simple. When that sarts ,when they sacrifice ethics and princile for power any lagitamacey they had is eaten away.Any more perversion by the GOP and they will be out and not see the light of day for another 40 years.


http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/index-old.php

Staffers for Minnesota Congressman Jim Ramstad spent the last two days telling constituents that they didn't know how he voted, that he was a letter-writer and even that it was a 'private vote'.

But late this afternoon Rep. Ramstad sent out emails letting constituents know he was in the Shays Handful voting against the DeLay Rule.

There are five Republicans on the Ethics Committee (and five Dems).

Of those, Chairman Joel Hefley of Colorado is in the Shays Handful. He voted against the DeLay Rule. Missouri's Kenny Hulshof is in there too.

Ohio's Steven LaTourette is telling constituents that he's in the Shays Handful; but as of yet we've seen no press reports that confirm this.

As we reported earlier today, Illinois Congresswoman Judy Biggert seems to be hanging tough with the 'private vote' line, refusing to say how she voted.

We had Washington state's Doc Hastings down as a letter-writer. But late this afternoon we received word that a Hastings staffer told at least one constituent that Hastings supported the DeLay Vote but wouldn't reveal how he voted because it was a 'secret' vote. (I guess he sort of wanted to mix up the categories a bit.) If anyone hears more on Hastings, let us know.

These crooks are feeling the heat. About time. They are an ethics joke.

Ethics violation like of Roy Moore? :) :)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6542177/site/newsweek/

At the same time, DeLay is quietly raking in fresh bundles of cash from GOP colleagues and big corporate donors for another highly personal cause: paying off his mounting legal bills.A NEWSWEEK tally shows that a special legal-defense fund created by DeLay in 2000 has collected more than $932,000, including $370,000 in the past four months alone. That's when Austin prosecutor Ronnie Earle began stepping up his investigation into allegedly illicit fund-raising by a political committee set up by DeLay to push a controversial redistricting plan through the Texas Legislature. A huge chunk of the new DeLay legal-defense cash, $200,000, comes from Republican House members who have new reasons to be especially grateful to the majority leader: the success of the DeLay-engineered Texas redistricting plan brought four new Texas GOP members to Washington this month, thereby consolidating Republican control in the chamber.

But much of the rest of the cash comes from a posse of corporate donors such as Texas horse-racing magnate Charles Hurwitz, who, along with his company, Maxxam, has chipped in $10,000 to pay DeLay's legal debts. (Hurwitz also has contributed an additional $24,000 to other DeLay campaign committees in recent years.) Hurwitz and DeLay have a long relationship: when Hurwitz was facing a suit by federal regulators for allegedly defrauding a savings and loan in 1999, DeLay interceded with the chief federal bank regulator in an unsuccessful attempt to get her agency to back off the case. Hurwitz later hosted a golf and marlin-fishing fund-raiser for DeLay at Palmas del Mar, a luxurious resort complex he owns in Puerto Rico.

Hurwitz's most recent cause is getting legislation in Texas to permit video lottery and blackjack terminals at his Houston racetrack. To that end, Maxxam donated $50,000 to the campaign coffers of Texas Gov. Rick Perry as well as an additional $5,000 to DeLay's Texans for a Republican Majority (TRMPAC), the committee at the center of Earle's probe into the improper use of corporate cash in Texas races.

blast from the past

blast from the past

What's the big deal? Delay resigned. It was the right thing to do, and takes him off the plate for the next election cycle.