Thursday, April 7, 2005

Poor Tom DeLay

Today’s quote from Tom DeLay, in reference to the publicity surrounding his myriad "alleged" ethics violations:

"It's nothing but a bunch of leftist organizations that have a public strategy to demonize me..."

This, from a leader of the party whose National Committee publicly declared their intent to "Daschle-ize" new Senate minority leader Harry Reid. You remember how the RNC handled Tom Daschle, don’t you? With a series of well-orchestrated attacks and smears, they mercilessly pummeled him into becoming the first Senate leader in 52 years to lose his reelection bid.

I must admit, I’m a little muddled about the ethics violations of which DeLay is accused. Allegations of gift-taking, influence-buying, sharing a bed with big corporate and foreign interests…while these things are illegal, and should be, they smack to me of political business-as-usual. I remember being a young voter in the state of Illinois, where everyone took it for granted that most of the politicians were corrupt, and it didn’t really matter. Under the assumption that corrupt politics were the only way anything ever got done. The behind the scenes machinations of the Chicago Democrats were given blanket pardon under the slogan that Chicago was "The City That Works."

So I think the powers who are out to "get" Tom DeLay are barking up the wrong tree when they start checking off a list of his political no-nos. The American people are just going to yawn and say, "So what?" It doesn’t matter that the things he does are clearly unethical and clearly against the law. They are clearly boring. They are NOT a nice juicy sex scandal that the public can really sink their teeth into. If it doesn’t constitute hiding under beds and exploiting intimate details of private lives with a hypocritical cry of moral indignation, the electorate is not interested. While the democrats were shouting into the wind about Tom DeLay’s political corruption, DeLay was making political hay by jumping into the middle of the Terry Shiavo battle. Which strategy netted more on-camera time for the cause?

More concerning to me is DeLay’s virtual declaration of war on "an arrogant, out-of-control, unaccountable judiciary that thumbed their nose at Congress and the president." What exactly makes them out of control…the fact that they demonstrated they had not yet been stocked with sufficient Bush Administration appointees to come to heel on a "right to life" case with which Congress and the President had absolutely no business, or legal right, to interfere?  Apparently, the GOP wants the courts completely under their control. Democrats approved over 200 of the administration’s first-term nominees, while blocking only ten of the worst. Why has the blocking of ten judicial nominees by the minority party become such an issue that it has caused unprecedented action by the majority party? A vendetta against the Senate Minority Leader that cost him his job; the majority leader of the House making not-so-veiled threats against the judiciary; and Senate Republicans considering the "nuclear option" of taking away the minority party’s right to exert last-ditch control on a runaway senate with the filibuster.

One has to wonder, to what degree is the Republican Party at large invested in targeting the judicial system for a wholesale takeover by conservative interests? And why? Are we expected to believe that the GOP has become so drunk with power that they would fly into such a large-scale rage at such a small-scale defeat? Some of us may swallow that…but the rest of us are left to wonder what is really at stake here. What is so important about these last ten judicial nominations that the party would go to such lengths to assure their confirmation? And why are the American people NOT asking these questions?

If Tom DeLay goes down, it shouldn’t be for some amorphous political double-dealings for which the general population is too apathetic to hold him accountable. It should be for his "arrogant, out-of-control, unaccountable" attitude toward a constitutionally ordained branch of our government, which was created as part of the checks and balances built into our system by our wise founding fathers; not to be at the beck and call of the Executive and Legislative branches, but to serve as a balance against that power, real or assumed. And if DeLay's attitude is shared by the bulk of the Republican party, they should all go down with him.

9 comments:

  1. See, this is why I try and stay out of politics....I don't even know who this Tom guy is.  I have enough of a battle keeping abreast of who is molesting whom, who is marrying whom and who is leaving/killing whom.

    I wish I knew who Tom is...I think about it tomorrow.

    :)   <~ cheesy grin



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  2. I hate Tom Delay.  I have every since the day my letter to Congress had to be channeled through his office when I was a Texas voter in the 90s.  He is an arrogant bastard.

    If Americans want trash, real trash on Delay, they need to just wait until the male prostitute Delay has had regular sex with decides to go to college and reveal his former exploitation.  

    My moral-dar is all over Delay, if he is not doing a male prostitute on a regular basis, then he has a black woman with child hidden somewhere, or a white underage girl paid off.  But it is definitely sexual.  His type is always the closet pervert.  

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  3. you really put things succiently and well.
    Marti

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  4. There's an old saw in journalism:  'If it bleeds, it leads'!   THIS, clearly, does NOT bleed ... at least not yet.

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  5. I love his excuse of "everybody else is doing it!" Well, gee Tom, if everybody else in Congress decides to climb to the top of the capital dome and jump off, are you gonna go too? I'd pay good money to see that. That sorry excuse doesn't cut it with my sisters and it shouldn't cut it with the voters. either.

    Jackie

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  6. Roy Blunt, number three on the House Republican totem pole (DeLay is number two behind House Speaker Dennis Hastert), said in defense of DeLay, "The things that Tom has been criticized about in one way or another every member of Congress could be criticized about."  Not exactly a ringing endorsement for our elected representatives.
    It's too bad DeLay's not attractive enough to be having a juicy sex scandal.  Then the public might start paying more attention to the ethical lapses.
    I believe his involvement in the Terri Schiavo tragedy and his continued calls for more judicial restraint are just smokescreens to divert the public's attention.

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  7. Delay and a couple of other GOPers laid the groundwork for their attack against the judiciary during the Clinton administration, but their attemps failed because Clinton is in office. Could it be possible that his current disapproval rating, along with that of the president, mean some people are finally opening their eyes to the dangers posed by this majority and administraton?
    Candace

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  8. Lisa, have you seen your boyfriend Tom Delay holding that gun in his hands on the opening board of AOL today.  Seems like he is getting cocky.

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