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Conservatives on Tom DeLay
"I don't want to prejudge him and my hope is that Tom will be able to prove his case... But I think the burden is on him to prove it at this point."
-- Newt Gingrich on CBS News (4/12/05)
Tom DeLay would have us believe that questions about his ethics can be dismissed as "partisan attacks." He has described the district attorney investigating his PAC in Texas as "vindictive and partisan," to which the DA replied, "Being called vindictive and partisan by Tom DeLay is like being called ugly by a frog." Even more importantly, DeLay's list of critics includes a great many conservatives and staunch Republicans. In fact DeLay's ethics admonishments only came because the five Republicans on the Ethics Committee voted in favor of the decisions. Of course three of those five, including the Chairman, Joel Hefley, were promptly removed at the beginning of this year. Read what these Republicans had to say on their removal, then see what many, many other conservatives have said and written about DeLay, Inc.:
Removed Chairman, Rep. Joel Hefley, as reported in the Denver Post:
"[This] looks very much like a purge."
Removed GOP member, Rep. Kenny Hulshof, as originally reported in the St. Louis Post Dispatch:
"I believe the decision was a direct result of our work in the last session... particularly my chairing the investigative subcommittee."
Now see what other conservatives have had to say...
Third-ranking Republican Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) on ABC's "This Week" (4/10/05)
"I think he has to come forward and lay out what he did and why he did it and let the people then judge for themselves."
Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) as reported in the Chicago Tribune (4/13/05)
"We've got to uphold the highest standards of legality and ethics... You can't have your leader under a cloud. It makes it difficult to run."
Wall Street Journal editorial: "Smells Like Beltway" (3/28/05)
"The Beltway wisdom is right. Mr. DeLay does have odor issues. Increasingly, he smells just like the Beltway itself."
[...]
"The problem, rather, is that Mr. DeLay, who rode to power in 1994 on a wave of revulsion at the everyday ways of big government, has become the living exemplar of some of its worst habits. Mr. DeLay's ties to Mr. Abramoff might be innocent, in a strictly legal sense, but it strains credulity to believe that Mr. DeLay found nothing strange with being included in Mr. Abramoff's lavish junkets.
"Nor does it seem very plausible that Mr. DeLay never considered the possibility that the mega-lucrative careers his former staffers Michael Scanlon and Mr. Buckham achieved after leaving his office had something to do with their perceived proximity to him. These people became rich as influence-peddlers in a government in which legislators like Mr. DeLay could make or break fortunes by tinkering with obscure rules and dispensing scads of money to this or that constituency. Rather than buck this system as he promised to do while in the minority, Mr. DeLay has become its undisputed and unapologetic master as Majority Leader.
"Whether Mr. DeLay violated the small print of House Ethics or campaign-finance rules is thus largely beside the point. His real fault lies in betraying the broader set of principles that brought him into office, and which, if he continues as before, sooner or later will sweep him out."
Michelle Malkin on the Wall Street Journal editorial:
"DeLay's ethical problems, on the other hand, are completely fair game for criticism. The Wall Street Journal takes a tough stand in a must-read editorial today."
Conservative Foundation Judicial Watch on the Wall Street Journal editorial:
"Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, was the first conservative leader to call on DeLay to step aside. He said he is detailing his concerns about DeLay in newsletters to about 180,000 supporters of his group. He said the Wall Street Journal editorial was 'tremendously significant' because the newspaper's editorial page is regarded as conservative, undercutting DeLay's contention that his problems stem from liberal enemies.
"House Republicans 'need someone else in there promoting the conservative cause if they actually believe in it,' Fitton said. 'He's not doing us any favors.'"
Conservative Foundation Judicial Watch Urges Rep. DeLay To Resign From Congress (10/7/04):
"The ethics committee report lays out a sordid story of money for access. Mr. Delay has repeatedly abused the public trust, and this extraordinary ethics committee rebuke raises the question as to whether he should remain in Congress. Judicial Watch has already called on Mr. Delay to step down as Majority Leader. He ought to consider retiring to private life."
David Brooks (New York Times): "Reining In the G.O.P.'s Parade" (4/9/05)
"Then there is the Tom DeLay situation. Conversations with House Republicans in the past week leave me with one clear impression: If DeLay falls, it will not be because he took questionable trips or put family members on the payroll. It will be because he is anxiety-producing and may become a political liability.
"Being conservative, the American people don't want leaders who perpetually play it close to the ethical edge. They don't want leaders who, under threat, lash out wildly at beloved institutions like the judiciary. They don't want leaders whose instinct is always to go out wildly on the attack. They don't want leaders so reckless that even when they know they are living under a microscope, they continue to act in ways that invite controversy.
"House Republicans like what DeLay has done, and few have any personal animus toward him, but his aggressiveness makes them - and his own constituents - nervous. Only 39 percent of DeLay's Texas constituents said they would stick with him if he were up for re-election today, a Houston Chronicle survey found."
David Brooks (New York Times): "Masters of Sleaze" (3/22/05)
"Abramoff's and Scanlon's Indian-gaming scandal will go down as the movement's crowning achievement, more shameless than anything the others would do, but still the culmination of the trends building since 1995. It perfectly embodied their creed and philosophy: 'I'd love us to get our mitts on that moolah!!' as Abramoff wrote to Reed.
"They made at least $66 million.
"This is a major accomplishment. And remember: Abramoff didn't do it on his own.
It took a village. The sleazo-cons thought they could take over K Street to advance their agenda. As it transpired, K Street took over them."
Andrew Ferguson (Weekly Standard): "A Lobbyist's Progress" (12/20/04)
"Several things are striking about the Abramoff story, as it has unfolded in the Post and in the documents released through the Senate investigation. One is the sheer lusciousness of the numbers involved. First-tier lobbying firms in Washington might bill a total of $20 million in fees a year. The Senate committee has reported that Abramoff and his partner Scanlon split as much as $82 million in fees from six tribes over three years. That figure doesn't include the additional millions that Abramoff told tribes to donate to charitable and political organizations. Moreover, these fees were collected during a period when Congress was considering scarcely any Indian-related legislation at all.
"And then there is the identity of the people involved. For 25 years Abramoff has been a key figure in the conservative movement that led to the 1994 Republican Revolution, which once promised "to drain the swamp" in Washington, D.C. Abramoff is mentor and close friend to the prominent activist Grover Norquist, and to Ralph Reed, founder of the Christian Coalition, highly successful political operative, and self-advertised adviser to the Bush White House. Both Reed and Norquist, in fact, lead organizations that were recipients of the tribes' generosity, through Abramoff's intercession.
"All of these factors combine to make Abramoff's story worth pondering. They also go a long way towards explaining why Republicans in Washington stopped using the term 'Beltway Bandits' sometime around 1995..."
"The story lines put together by the committee's investigators, and especially the emails and memos they released as evidence, show a riot of presumption and greed on the part of Abramoff, Scanlon, and Reed."