With every passing day, it seems as if House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is in more political trouble — so can he counter it with “the best defense is a good offense?”
Amid continued news reports that DeLay’s supporters will soon launch a big campaign painting to opposition to him as merely coming from liberals and a biased media, a prominent Republican has moved to put a BIG distance between him and his Congressional leader.
“He is an absolute embarrassment to me and to the Republican Party,” U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Bridgeport, told more than 50 Greenwich residents yesterday morning at Town Hall. He was in Greenwich to host a public forum, open to all political parties, on whatever pressing issues attendees were interested in discussing.
And there’s more:
Yesterday, Shays flatly denied supporting DeLay, telling the small but lively gathering that the Texan probably will not last out this term as house majority leader, lacks credibility and will never attain the prominent position of speaker of the house.
“He knows that . . . if he ever runs for speaker, I get to vote on the House floor, and my ‘No’ vote combined with the Democrats means he will never be speaker,” Shays said, drawing applause from the room. “One of the things I want to say here is that Tom DeLay will never be speaker in Congress.”“With all due respect, I can be accused of a lot of things, but supporting Tom DeLay is not one of them,” Shays added.
According to this Greenwich Time article, a constituent who supports Shays made it clear that Shays had to choose between support for DeLay and his vote:
Town resident John Howard, 39, said he has supported Shays in the past and knows that the congressman is not a defender of DeLay. Even so, Howard said, he wouldn’t continue to support Shays if he voted to keep DeLay in power.
“I was very proud of you for standing up to the Republican caucus,” Howard said. “However, you do vote for the Republican leadership in Congress — and you must know that you have a lot of constituents, like myself, who deeply respect you, and agree with you on many different issues — but I can’t vote for a congressperson who would vote to keep Tom DeLay in power. You must understand that he’s a liability for you.”
Shays apparently does and also apparently just doesn’t like the way DeLay is performing:
“Do I think Tom DeLay will be the majority leader by the end of this term? No,” Shays said. “I don’t think Tom DeLay is going to survive. He goes to the edge and he goes beyond . . . Even knowing there’s a microscope on him, he continues to do these things.”
Even though Shay’s Connecticut district requires that he needs to get a chunk of Democratic votes to be elected, given DeLay’s prominence and power it’s not a good sign for DeLay that a prominent Republican has been so publicly blunt. Shays could have found another way to answer his irate constituents — if he wasn’t convinced DeLay’s House career is now on the wane.
UPDATE: The Washington Post has more details on how DeLay and GOPers are planning to push the singing fat lady aside. Among them:
Allies and friends of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (Tex.) have concluded that public attention to his ethics is unlikely to abate for months to come, and they plan to try to preserve his power by launching an aggressive media strategy and calling in favors from prominent conservative leaders, according to Republicans participating in the strategy sessions.
The Republicans said the strategy combines leaks from DeLay allies about questionable Democratic trips and financial matters; denunciations of unfavorable news stories as biased, orchestrated rehashes; and swift, organized responses to journalists’ inquiries.
And:
Officials working with DeLay said he is trying to lock in support by sowing the message that an attack on him is an attack on the conservative movement, and that taking him out would be the Democrats’ first step toward regaining control of the House and Senate. These officials said they believe the attacks are part of a strategy by Democrats, aided by watchdog groups funded by liberals, to use the ethics process to try to regain power.
Are Republicans going to fall for this? If you read Shays, you already see signs that some will NOT because a)the party is bigger than one man, b)the party has plenty of talent that can step into his position and it’ll survive, c)he is a rotten image for the party and is starting to politicallyi defile all Republicans who endorse or embrace him. Indeed, read THIS quote in the Post piece from a Republican:
One Republican familiar with the strategy, who asked not to be identified in order to be more candid, described the message as “Clintonian” in that it emphasized the idea that “there’s no news, and they’re out to get us” — with the addition that “liberal media, liberal Democrats” are to blame.
So we again come full circle: during the Clinton years GOPers and particularly conservative talk show hosts talked about the importance of taking responsibility for actions and belittled the culture of victimization. Basically, that’ll be the DeLay strategy — deny, act the victim, and attack.
BUT it’s going to be extremely difficult for DeLay to play the victim of a MSM and Democratic political jihad with stories like this where beset former associate Jack Abramoff uses Newsweek to point his finger directly at The Hammer.
UPDATE II: A MUST READ POST by a conservative blogger asking for Delay to step down. At the top of Thoughts On Line Steve Sturm has this writtten: 2 days ago, I called for the GOP leadership to get rid of Tom DeLay. I’m still waiting..
Now, read THIS POST where he goes into detail. This post, written Friday BEFORE the stories we point to in our update, takes up the issue of DeLay essentially using the same kind of defense Clinton used — and how this self-described conservative blogger rejects it.
A few excerpts:
Well, as Yogi said, it’s deja vu all over again, but this time with Tom DeLay, the House Majority Leader. No, he’s not the President, but he is someone in a leadership position who is failing miserably at meeting the standards one expects our elected leaders to meet. Whether it is steering dollars to family members or taking junkets paid for by those seeking government favors, DeLay has revealed himself to be nothing more than a hack using his office in order to enrich himself.
As with Clinton, it doesn’t – and shouldn’t – matter if what DeLay did was illegal. It was wrong. You’re not supposed to take trips from people looking for favors (as I’ve posted earlier, I’ve fired people for doing just that). You’re not supposed to put your family on the payroll. You’re supposed to use the power of your office to make America’s life easier, not your own.
The question is whether Republicans will turn a blind eye to his misdeeds, whether they will do for DeLay what the Democrats did for Clinton. Will they stand by him because they can’t stand to see the Democrats ‘win’? Or will they move him aside because it is the right thing to do?
Right now, it doesn’t look like the GOP will do the right thing. Like the Democrats did with Clinton, the GOP is rallying around DeLay.
For me, it’s simple. DeLay must step aside. If he doesn’t, then the Bush Administration and Hastert have to push him aside. If they don’t, then they deserve to lose every election for years to come. For they will have shown themselves to be no different than the Democrats…
UPDATE III: And even centrist Democrats are chortling. For instance, Bull Moose — who must be read in full. Here’s part of it:
The Moose expresses his deep appreciation to the conservative movement for sticking by their Bug Man. The Moose was concerned that the right might be abandoning the House Majority Leader at his moment of peril….
This is a clarifying moment. By identifying with DeLay, the right is telegraphing to the world that their once proud movement based on principle is now identified with a corrupt political establishment whose overriding objective is to hold onto power at all cost. Thanks again, former comrades.
UPDATE IV: Josh Marhsall provides some of the local political context for Shay’s comments.
But then you have the case of Pennsylvian Senator Rick Santorum, who’s also up for re-election, issuing a statement that sounds suspiciously like political CTA — saying DeLay has to say more (win over his critics outside and inside the party in Pennyylvania) but overtly giving his support (assure DeLay and DeLay backers in Washington and at home).
Taken all of this together: DeLay is proving to be a political problem for Republicans, one that those up for re-election for House or Senate seats may have to address. Will they weather the storm or decide it just may be easier finding a way to ease him out and someone else in?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.