The picture you see on the left is an albatross and the picture you see on the right is Tom DeLay: we want to make sure you don’t get mixed up.
Because DeLay is proving to be a big obstacle to the GOP’s image as his name pops up in news stories showing he may be ethically challenged…and GOP members in Congress keep doing what they gotta do in Congress to protect him.
In the process it seems as if what we’re seeing is the virtual repudiation of the kind of crackdown on corruption that former Majority Leader Newt Gingrich trumpeted when he was on top in Congress. The latest from the Washington Post (linked above):
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) has dismissed questions about his ethics as partisan attacks, but revelations last week about his overseas travel and ties to lobbyists under investigation have emboldened Democrats and provoked worry among Republicans.
With some members increasingly concerned that DeLay had left himself vulnerable to attack, several Republican aides and lobbyists said for the first time that they are worried about whether he will survive and what the consequences could be for the party’s image.
The Republicans’ situation is this:
- They have the votes and institutional power in Congress to short-circuit any attempts to get DeLay.
- They have the moral support to do so since DeLay is admired as a staunch party man who has paid his dues and served his party well. Some in the base are more focused on power than insisting on a party-label-blind crackdown on ethics questions. And the GOP today has the media infrastructure in place (publications, cable, talk radio) to stay on message with a rationale for any moves it makes to defend DeLay, if the situation gets worse.
- But the GOP can’t win moral ground by protecting him. It can only lose turf. The party would do far better to cut its losses and let the chips fall where they may. This would be intraparty competition to replace him, but the GOP has enough political talent to survive the exit of one political figure from the heights of Congressional power (parties always do).
The Post notes some of the concern — not quite panic — setting in:
“If death comes from a thousand cuts, Tom DeLay is into a couple hundred, and it’s getting up there,” said a Republican political consultant close to key lawmakers. “The situation is negatively fluid right now for the guy. You start hitting arteries, it only takes a couple.” The consultant, who at times has been a DeLay ally, spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying he could not be candid otherwise.
At least six Republicans expressed concern over the weekend about DeLay’s situation. They said they do not think DeLay necessarily deserves the unwanted attention he is receiving. But they said that the volume of the revelations about his operation is becoming alarming and that they do not see how it will abate.
Thomas E. Mann, senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, said that DeLay remains generally strong within his party and is an effective leader and operator, but that “signs are emerging that both the number and nature of charges being raised against him could put him in serious political peril.”
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the Post , the paper looked at some the political firestorms swirling around ethics issues — some of them DeLay related — in an editorial titled: “Warning: Ethics-Free Zone.”
Indeed, if DeLay’s name keeps surfacing, the media keeps covering allegations against him and if the GOP — even successfully — defends him, then DeLay will become indistinguishable from that bird on the left and the GOP could see some fowl numbers in future political polls.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.