OK, Now DeLay is in Trouble

Accusations have been swirling around House Majority Leader Tom DeLay [R-Texas] for several weeks now. This has been generally understood in the idiot press as an obvious and somewhat cynical attempt by Democrats to repeat their successful demonization of Newt Gingrich and to drive an effective antagonist from his position of power.

Liberals have said, so what, DeLay is a bad guy and deserves to go. Conservatives have argued that DeLay, however sleazy he seems, is only doing what everyone on Capitol Hill does. And there's the problem.

The correct point of comparison to what is going on here is not the destruction of Newt Gingrich, but Gingrich's triumph in 1994. The Republicans came to power after forty years wandering in the wilderness by convincing the country that the Democratic leadership in Congress was irredeemably corrupt.

Republicans were the party that was going to clean up the Augean Stables of Capitol Hill. They've had a decade in power now and haven't done so. Now Democrats are on the offensive, charging that the Republican leadership is corrupt and using DeLay as their prime evidence of corruption. They are doing to DeLay what Gingrich did to Jim Wright, the Democratic Speaker of the House who was forced to resign in 1989 amidst charges of corruption. That was the springboard for escalating charges that culminated in the Republican takeover of the House five years later. Now the Democrats hope to replicate Gingrich's triumph.

But Republicans, unlike Democrats, are always quick to eat their own. They will respond to Democrat charges of corruption by simply jettisoning the targets of those accusations. DeLay will go down, and the Democrats will dance on his grave, and the idiot press will rejoice, but the damage will be limited by the fact that the rest of the Republican leadership will have effectively distanced themselves from the former Majority Leader.

The signal that the Republicans consider DeLay to be expendable was issued by Rick Santorum, a member of the Senate leadership from Pennsylvania. AP reports Santorum as saying:

...embattled House Majority Leader Tom DeLay needs to answer questions about his ethics and "let the people then judge for themselves."

Read the article here.

Santorum's refusal to speak up in defense of DeLay [although he did say that he was not aware that DeLay had broken any laws] is significant. Santorum's credentials with the party's right wing [DeLay's base of support] are impeccable and his passiveness signals that the right is quite willing to wash their hands of the embattled Majority Leader. They all understand that Wright, not Gingrich, is the correct analog for DeLay and they are determined to keep the taint attached to his name from spreading to the rest of the Republican leadership. They will do to DeLay just what they did to Gingrich and Livingstone before him.

So DeLay stands alone against his accusers, enjoying protection from neither the House leadership, the White House, nor his conservative base. He is now..., what is the phrase? Oh yeah..., "twisting slowly..., slowly in the wind."