House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is apparently forgetting the late Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill’s oft-quoted warning that “all politics is local” — and a poll shows he’s taking a hit in his home district.
So he’ll have to step up his campaign to equate questions raised about his ethics or the wisdom of shoving Congress into the Terri Schiavo case with an assault on the GOP, the GOP ruling majority, the GOP hold on the White House and Our Life As We Know It In The United States. The Houston Chronicle (which surely is part of the insidious plot against him) reports this:
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s footing among his constituents has slipped drastically during the past year and a majority of his district disapproves of how he handled the Terri Schiavo case, according to a Houston Chronicle poll.
Nearly 40 percent of the 501 voters questioned Wednesday through Friday said their opinion of the powerful Sugar Land Republican is less favorable than last year, compared with 11 percent who said their view of him has improved.
Half of the respondents gave DeLay a somewhat or very favorable rating.
Yet 45 percent said they would vote for someone other than DeLay if a congressional election in the 22nd District were at hand; 38 percent said they would stick with him.
Not good news. They must all be Texas liberals….More:
“There seems to be no question that there has been an erosion in support for the congressman,” said John Zogby, whose polling company, Zogby International, performed the survey. “He is posting numbers that one would have to consider in the dangerous territory for an incumbent. And he isn’t just an incumbent, he is a longtime incumbent.”
The statistics are rife with political warning signs for DeLay, particularly among his Republican supporters, Zogby said.
Seventy-eight percent of those Republican voters said they picked DeLay in 2004, and 63 percent said they would do so again. “He hasn’t lost a majority of conservatives, but he has lost enough of them to pull him down,”said Zogby, who has conducted public opinion polls since 1984. “These are not good re-election numbers.”
Even so, Zogby notes that DeLay has a year and a half before he’s up for re-election. That’s more than enough time to demonize and vilify those who raise the kinds of ethics questions about him that the (politically late) GOPer Newt Gingrich raised against former Democratic Speaker of the House Jim Wright.
The question remains: will top GOPers decide the party has plenty of political talent and should to distance itself from DeLay and not protect him anymore? It’ll be interesting to see upcoming polls on how the GOP is faring with the public in general, as the party continues to go to bat for The Hammer. Prediction: the GOP, if it keeps protecting him, is going to take a hit.
The San Diego Union-Tribune’s new columnist Ruben Navarrette, Jr. — recently hired from the Dallas Morning News — yesterday issued a warning to the GOP and DeLay in particular:
Republicans are making inroads with Hispanics thanks to White House efforts to reform the immigration system. They’re laying the groundwork to do well with young voters for years to come by trying to make Social Security more equitable for the taxpayers of tomorrow. And, according to polls, they’re still the choice of a majority of Americans when it comes to which party can be trusted to fight the war on terror.
Now those gains are threatened by the rigid agenda of social conservatives within the GOP. Democrats once convinced themselves that they were more open-minded than anyone else; for social conservatives, it’s all about being closer to God than anyone else. They spend a lot of time trying to convince the country that they have cornered the market on morality and they imply, or sometimes say outright, that anyone who disagrees with them comes up short in that department.
Indeed, it’s called HUBRIS. The GOP’s social conservatives are becoming to the GOP what the McGovernites and far left have been to the Democratic party. And because there seems to be no compromise with those that disagree with them, they’re rallying their troops but making many enemies among those who might otherwise be open to GOP ideas. And then there’s DeLay:
That was the modus operandi of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay once the Schiavo drama kicked into high gear. He referred to Michael Schiavo’s attorney as the “embodiment of evil.” He insisted to a group of religious conservatives that God “brought us Terri Shiavo.” He demonized those who disagreed with him – those who thought that Terri Schiavo’s husband should decide her fate – by accusing them of being part of a larger conspiracy to harm DeLay’s reputation and that of other conservatives. He dared try to link his own ethical problems with Terri Schiavo’s ordeal.
And DeLay did all this despite the fact that – as we now know thanks to a report in the Los Angeles Times – he and his family confronted a similar predicament 16 years ago with DeLay’s dying father, and they decided to cut off life support. According to the newspaper, DeLay did not object to that decision at the time.
DeLay insists that the two cases are in no way comparable. His father had no chance of recovering, he says. Where have I heard that before? I know – from Michael Schiavo, in talking about his now-departed wife.”
May we say it? Amen.
UPDATE: DeLay’s rep is pooh-poohing the poll, almost sticking his tongue out at restless voters. Here’s part of the New Spin:
A DeLay aide pointed out that the congressman from Sugar Land has been elected with solid support for two decades.
“(Voters) do that because he’s getting things done for the area.
He’s also earned their support because they know he’s guided by principles, not polls,” spokesman Dan Allen said.
Indeed, we’ll even list a few of his principles here:
Do and say whatever you can to get elected. Do and say whatever you can to get elected. Do and say whatever you can to get elected. Do and say whatever you can to get elected. Do and say whatever you can to get elected. Do and say whatever you can to get elected. Do and say whatever you can to get elected.
There are others as well but we could only list a few here…
(DeLay art via 2 Political Junkies)
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.