Is DeLay going down?

[RTFirefly]

@elucidator

Who would stand for the ethically bankrupt hyenas?

“When they came for the ethically bankrupt hyenas, I did not speak out, because I was not an ethically bankrupt hyena.”

[RTFirefly]

@wonderwench

The attacks on his family and his travel make that claim more credible. The opposition is foolish by not focusing on his unique ethics problems.

I think the political usefulness of the Dems’ focusing on DeLay depends on how successful they are in tying his offenses to the warp and woof of the way Republicans do business these days. And they’ve got to get their asses in gear, I think: the Dems just don’t have the hang of the concept of getting there first and defining the political terrain before the GOP does.

If the GOP gets there first, and can define DeLay as a crooked dealmeister whose transgressions have nothing to do with the GOP as a whole, then they can toss DeLay overboard and claim to be the party of Good Government - “Look! We’ve cleaned out our own crook!” and the Dems gain little from it in 2006.

[elucidator]

This just in…and already gone.

From Sludge Report, news that “liberals” are selling a T-Shirt that urges Tom DeLay to suicide! All right thinking Americans would be outraged at such scurillous behavior, unless they click the link and find…

nothing.

Nip right over before he takes it down, otherwise you’ll think I’m making shit up.

[Jonathan_Chance]

@RTFirefly

I think the political usefulness of the Dems’ focusing on DeLay depends on how successful they are in tying his offenses to the warp and woof of the way Republicans do business these days. And they’ve got to get their asses in gear, I think: the Dems just don’t have the hang of the concept of getting there first and defining the political terrain before the GOP does.

If the GOP gets there first, and can define DeLay as a crooked dealmeister whose transgressions have nothing to do with the GOP as a whole, then they can toss DeLay overboard and claim to be the party of Good Government - “Look! We’ve cleaned out our own crook!” and the Dems gain little from it in 2006.

No, I disagree. I think that if DeLay goes down it will provide grist for the 2006 and 2008 elections regardless of how he goes. It’s just a matter of spin, not reality.

[RTFirefly]

@Jonathan Chance

No, I disagree. I think that if DeLay goes down it will provide grist for the 2006 and 2008 elections regardless of how he goes. It’s just a matter of spin, not reality.

I don’t think so. The SCLM has so bought into the GOP’s talking points that this is what will happen in 2006 if DeLay is forced out this year:

1. The GOP will say they did their part forcing DeLay out, and besides, it’s time to move on from questions of one man’s character to the serious issues facing the country.
2. The editorial pages of the Washington Post and the New York Times and all the other big papers, plus all the gasbags on the Sunday morning political talk shows, will solemnly nod their heads and agree.
3. Rush and Hannity and O’Reilly and the rest of the GOP propagandanists will find something new to hammer the Dems about, and it will get far more play in the papers than DeLay did when he was news.
4. Everyone will get caught up in whatever the latest GOP echo-chamber issue is, and forget about DeLay. Just the way Abu Ghraib seemed to matter not a whit by Election Day 2004, even though it had been an earthshattering story not six months before.

That’s all unless the Dems can weave a narrative that wraps DeLay and the GOP together too tightly to argue with. If the Dems can get it into everyone’s heads that the GOP as a whole was playing the same game, and that DeLay was guilty only of going just the slightest tad further, then they’ve got a chance to turn it around. But if the GOP can put daylight in between itself and DeLay in people’s minds, then DeLay will make no difference in 2006, let alone 2008.

That’s my prediction and I’m sticking with it. Might we have the stuff here for a bet, JC?

[squeegee]

I’d take RT’s side of that bet as well. Sounds pretty much like how it would go.

[Squink]

Doomed, deLay is Doomed:
DeLay Apologizes for Schiavo Case Rhetoric

At a crowded news conference in his Capitol office, DeLay addressed remarks he made in the hours after the brain-damaged Florida woman died on March 31. “I said something in an inartful way and I shouldn’t have said it that way and I apologize for saying it that way,” DeLay told reporters.
…
“I believe in an independent judiciary. I repeat, of course I believe in an independent judiciary,” DeLay said.

Perhaps even more telling:

“I think there are different levels of friendship with anybody,” McClellan said.

[Jonathan_Chance]

DeLay Deathwatch continues!

From today’s Washington Post

The airfare to London and Scotland in 2000 for then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) was charged to an American Express card issued to Jack Abramoff, a Washington lobbyist at the center of a federal criminal and tax probe, according to two sources who know Abramoff’s credit card account number and to a copy of a travel invoice displaying that number.

DeLay’s expenses during the same trip for food, phone calls and other items at a golf course hotel in Scotland were billed to a different credit card also used on the trip by a second registered Washington lobbyist, Edwin A. Buckham, according to receipts documenting that portion of the trip.

It’s only a matter of time, now.

[silenus]

He’s going down.

[BrainGlutton]

FYI, http://dropthehammer.org/ features a list of corporate contributors to DeLay’s defense fund – including American Airlines, Bacardi, Nissan, RJ Reynolds and Verizon – as well as a diagram showing his network of organizations and funding resources.

There’s a scathing article by Ed Tomasky in The American Prospect, 5/6/05, http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=9537, about how DeLay has de-democratized the House and how moderate Republicans have been way too silent about it.

[Polycarp]

@RTFirefly

“When they came for the ethically bankrupt hyenas, I did not speak out, because I was not an ethically bankrupt hyena.”

That whirring sound you hear is Pastor Martin H. in his grave; I figure he’s up to about 2700 RPM by now!

[BrainGlutton]

@silenus

He’s going down.

All I get from that link is that Jack Abramoff is going town. DeLay might be tainted by association, but he’s not directly implicated.

[jayjay]

@BrainGlutton

All I get from that link is that Jack Abramoff is going town. DeLay might be tainted by association, but he’s not directly implicated.

DeLay is implicated by accepting the trips paid for by Abramoff’s credit card.

[DoctorJ]

Oh, he’ll go down.

They’re going to try to get in all the right-wing nutjobbery they can first, though. (See today’s “Justice Sunday”, for instance.) Then, when it seems the nutjobs they’re appeasing start to be outweighed by the moderates they’re losing, they’ll throw Delay over the side to win them back. If the Dems are smart, they won’t treat Delay’s undoing as a substantial victory, and they won’t let the Republicans use it to distance themselves from less popular positions.

[BrainGlutton]

@DoctorJ

They’re going to try to get in all the right-wing nutjobbery they can first, though. (See today’s “Justice Sunday”, for instance.)

Nitpick: That’s Frist’s project, not DeLay’s.

[BrainGlutton]

Update: House Speaker Dennis Hastert is urging House Republicans to reverse the rules changes the House Ethics Committee enacted for the sake of easing up on DeLay. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/04/27/national/w121749D82.DTL; http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4621687

I finally believe it. The Hammer’s goin’ down!

[elucidator]

Too easy. The scent of rodent is in the air. Tom DeLay (R, Undead), the world’s most cuddlesome arachnid, will not go gently into the night. Why, then, this extraordinary display of bi-partisan comity, this born-again devotion to scrupulous standards of ethical conduct?

Because the fix is in?

[Merijeek]

@elucidator

Too easy. The scent of rodent is in the air. Tom DeLay (R, Undead), the world’s most cuddlesome arachnid, will not go gently into the night. Why, then, this extraordinary display of bi-partisan comity, this born-again devotion to scrupulous standards of ethical conduct?

Because the fix is in?

Who knows?

What I’m really hoping for is that Delay goes for a flameout and takes some people with him.

Will I get my wish? My birthday is only five months away…

-Joe

[DoctorJ]

Nitpick: That’s Frist’s project, not DeLay’s.

True; I was speaking more globally. The GOP leadership can push the line with things like the Nuclear Option and Justice Sunday because as soon as the tide starts to turn, they can send the signal to push Delay over the side, taking the heat off and hopefully winning back some moderates.

[BrainGlutton]

@DoctorJ

The GOP leadership can push the line with things like the Nuclear Option and Justice Sunday because as soon as the tide starts to turn, they can send the signal to push Delay over the side, taking the heat off and hopefully winning back some moderates.

I have an image of a group of pre-industrial Russians riding a sleigh through the snow, and tossing the most expendable of their number to a pursuing pack of wolves . . .