Shifting Sands beneath DeLay's House of Scandal

by Kagro X

Via Atrios (not The Stakeholder this time, can you believe it?), my suspicions are raised by a Denver Post piece that Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) must have sat next to Joel Hefley on the plane ride home last night:

Rep. Tom Tancredo says it is "probably not the worst idea" for embattled House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to step down while he deals with ethics allegations.

Stepping into a swirling Washington controversy, the Littleton Republican said he doesn't think the current accusations of impropriety against DeLay amount to much. But Tancredo said that from a political perspective, DeLay has handled the ethics issue "stupidly."

"I don't think we should try to oust him," he said in an interview Thursday at the Capitol. "Right now, I would not encourage him to leave. If he chose to resign as majority leader until these matters are resolved, that's probably not the worst idea."

Tancredo would be the first House Republican outside the (overhyped) "Shays' Handful" to so much as hint that DeLay should consider stepping aside. And that's something.

Chris Shays himself, as we know, still refuses to back his words with meaningful deeds. His Republican colleagues Hefley and Jim Leach (R-IA), on the other hand, were brave enough to go on record yesterday in opposition to the GOP's foolish shielding of DeLay, even from the very same ethics process Republicans unanimously backed in the 108th Congress.

All that's left for Tancredo to do is to realize that for DeLay to deal with his ethics issues, there has to be a functioning ethics committee. And to get a funtioning ethics committee, there have to be rules for it. And for there to be rules for it, a majority of the committee has to agree to adopt those rules. And for a majority to agree to adopt those rules, the DeLay Protection Act of 2005 (a/k/a H. Res. 5 -- the House Rules package -- not coincidentally introduced by... Tom DeLay) will have to be partially repealed.

Luckily, Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV) has such a bill, which currently enjoys the cosponsorship of both Shays and Hefley, but neither one has expressed willingness to sign a discharge petition to actually bring it to the floor for a vote -- a tactic described by Shays as "nuclear" (though it is elsewhere, i.e., in the Senate, known by Republicans as "majority rule.")

Also affording Republicans like Tancredo an opportunity to back his words up with action: the questions of the privileges of the House, now brought twice by Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), where Hefley and now Leach have made their stands. Ought we not now to expect that Tancredo will join them on the third go-round? Well, that's what logic would tell you, but if consistency of principles had anything to do with it, Shays would have voted against the motion to table Pelosi's resolutions, too. But apparently, Shays' osteoporosis is degenerative, and his backbone softens and bends even as he wraps himself in steely rhetoric.

And, just so as not to leave The Stakeholder totally out in the cold on this one, they point us to today's NYT:

Ten former members of Congress, all Republicans, joined in a letter to the House leadership on Thursday to say they believed that revisions in House ethics rules this year were an "obvious action to protect Majority Leader Tom DeLay" from investigation. They said the changes needed to be reversed "to restore public confidence in the People's House."

DeLay has no obvious reason to listen to these ten, of course. The reality is that DeLay's power stems from the acquiescence of the current House GOP Conference and nowhere else. But those current members may themselves be persuaded by these ten, at least insofar as their letter is part of a mounting body of  evidence that the tide is turning among Republicans against DeLay. DeLay's power may be derived from the Conference, but the power of individual Conference members is derived from their ability to survive reelection contests, and the steady editorial drumbeat and daily revelations of still more and deeper ethical problems for DeLay isn't making him any more popular among his college of cardinals.

The Republican Conference was startled back into reality when it had to repeal its "DeLay Rule," the most obvious of the prophylactic measures intended to buoy The Hammer's sinking leadership. But time is running out for the 23 Republicans who claimed at the time to have disagreed with the passage of extraordinary measures for DeLay's protection to back their words with action. The gaunlet has been thrown: revising ethics rules are an "obvious action to protect Majority Leader Tom DeLay."  Are the members of the "Shays' Handful" for shielding DeLay and damning the torpedoes or not?

Comments

[DemFromCT]

Shays, at least, has asked deLay to resign. He doesn't vote that way, I know, but there it is. OTOH, the Note and the other DeLay apologists got a nice writeup yesterday by JMM:

DeNote to DeLay: We've got so much love to give. Isn't this our time?

Today ABC's The Note today gives Tom DeLay an advance exoneration and asks for an interview with the bug man.

Saith the Notesters: "And/but without a functioning House ethics committee, there is no natural forum in which Leader DeLay can clear up the legit unanswered questions about some of his conduct. And/but his unwillingness to do it in the feeding frenzy of a packed press conference seems reasonable. May we suggest an interview with The Note, Dan Allen?"

It's such a tough spot for the bug man, having all these unanswered questions swirling at a time when there's no functioning ethics committee. How could he have known that purging the ethics committee of its three non-DeLay loyalists and forcing through a re-write of the committee's rules to prevent it from issuing any more 'admonishments' of his behavior would lead to such an unhappy impasse?

They say power is the greatest aphrodisiac. And The Note's (as, for that matter, does much of Washington) got it bad.

The Note, of course, only reflects its sources, but dishonesty (aka spin) is part of the game. So, is "pressure growing" like the Brits say, or is he solid like the GOP insiders say?

[Meteor Blades]

Well, Tom Tancredo takes the high ground? Sort of. Not something he's done, so far as I know, in the 37 years I've known him.

[Kagro X]

Oh, I don't think it's the high ground. It's just politics. He has his own reasons to want DeLay gone, and I'll take it.

There's an old expression that has something to do with living, dying and swords. Can't bring it to mind just now, but I'm sure it's apt.

[simona]

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