Bringing Down the House

Where are you going to be on May 12? At the gala tribute dinner conservative groups in Washington are throwing for Tom DeLay? No? I won't be there either. But I'm glad conservatives are rallying behind DeLay, the scandal-struck Republican House majority leader. These conservatives are sticking to rather dangerous talking points. They keep insisting that the attacks on DeLay are nothing more than the dark work of the nasty liberal media that has been plotting with Democrats to destroy the entire conservative movement. If only. And--no coincidence--this is precisely how DeLay sees his current predicament. When The New York Times reported that he and his daughter received half a million dollars in fees from his campaign and political action committee, DeLay called the story, "Another seedy attempt by the liberal media to embarrass me." (Did he dismiss the Times' articles on Whitewater in such a fashion?)

When a shifty politician starts to blame media conspiracies for his own misdeeds, that's a good indication he senses real trouble is looming. But DeLay's ethics problems--taking overseas junkets arranged and paid for by corrupt lobbyists and foreign agents; putting family members on the payroll; setting up a political action committee that engages in shady (perhaps illegal) contributions laundering; virtually extorting another member to vote for a piece of legislation; among other questionable activities--have nothing to do with his right-wing views. Even the always-ready-for-a-fight conservative editorialists of the Wall Street Journal recently observed that DeLay has "odor issues," "smells just like the Beltway itself," and is "betraying the broader set of principles that brought him into office."

Still, most conservatives are accepting DeLay's  l'etat-c'est-moi strategy. The Washington Post reported that when right-wing leaders gathered at a meeting recently, Rep. Eric Cantor, a Virginia Republican who heads the save-DeLay forces in the House, told them that the anti-DeLay articles are appearing because the Democrats are unwilling "to accept the Republican majority in Congress, and see this majority leader as one that they can't beat at the polls and now have taken to a planned attack of personal destruction."

I wish the Democrats were that organized. Does Cantor truly believe that Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer are slyly pulling the strings that produce long, intricate articles about DeLay's overseas travels? Or that they orchestrated the three reprimands issued against DeLay last year by the Republican-chaired House ethics committee? Democrats should hope that Cantor and his comrades are this out of touch with reality. But while the DeLayists maintain a brave face in public, several House Democrats report that when they're in meetings with House Republicans and DeLay is mentioned, the Repubs shake their heads. It's not yet dead-man-walking time. But there seems to be a sentiment shared by Republicans that the U.S.S. DeLay cannot take on much more water than it already has. According to the Post, Republican aides have a daily morning conference call to trade intelligence on upcoming DeLay stories and to spin a response.

Not all GOPers are enthusiastically bailing out the water. On one of the Sunday chat shows, Sen. Rick Santorum, a fierce social conservative who has been tiptoeing left in preparation for what may be a difficult re-election campaign next year, said:

I think [DeLay] has to come forward and lay out what he did and why he did it and let the people then judge for themselves. But from everything I've heard--again, from the comments and responding to those--is everything he's done was according to the law. Now you may not like some of the things he's done. That's for the people of his district to decide, whether they want to approve that kind of behavior or not.

That's not quite a he's-my-man endorsement. Sen. John McCain also declined to race to DeLay's rescue, saying, " I don't know if he's become a liability to the Republican Party or not. I think that's a judgment that Republicans in the House and others will make." And Rep. Chris Shays, a moderate GOPer, has set himself up as the leader of a potential anti-DeLay coup. "Tom's conduct is hurting the Republican Party," Shays says, "is hurting this Republican majority, and it is hurting any Republican who is up for re-election." Heaven save Shays (from DeLay) should DeLay survive.