Redstate

If you really think that public denunciation of Tom DeLay based on Earle's charges months ago would have earned us some measure of goodwill, I think you're basing that on...

well...nothing.

From the left? No.

Political cover and deprivation of the other side of an extraordinarily useful weapon? Yeah.

One Ronnie Earle, best known for a vfrivolous indictment against Kay Bailey Hutchison after she creamed a Democrat in the special election to replace Lloyd Bentsen.

When we had this last go round, you never answered any of the questions about what throwing Tom off the boat would do to the potential bench of conservative leaders.

....what should be obvious: That an indicted House Majority Leader is a liability. That an indicted House Majority Leader with a demonstrated record of poor judgment and un-conservative actions is doubly so.

....I don't recall considering it a serious argument.

Are there better conservatives in the House?  Assuredly.

Are there better conservatives in the House leadership?  Does this question not assume that Tom DeLay is a meaningfully -- indispensably -- good conservative?  That's something I disagree with.

Would forcing him aside for the good of the party have had a chilling effect on future leaders?  Only the ones apt to get into trouble.

If I'm misremembering, let me know.

Here I thought the issue was whether had the conservative movement declared its independence from DeLay over the summer - if that would have helped us moving forward.

I think not. And I don't think you've got any basis for saying so except for your own "hunch" which deeply misunderestimates, I believe, Democrats willingness to keep this witch hunt moving forward.

Considering how many emails went back and forth. Since you consistently prove yourself immune from anyone's opinion but your own, I'm not seeing this as fruitful.

Would the Dems have continued pursuing DeLay?  Probably.  So what?

Could we have limited the damage to the party and movement?  Of course.  By doing the sensible thing last summer.

Instead, there was a huge bash, and many foolish things were said.  For naught.

I truly dislike.  For the most part I think they are playing a role that is necessary and while I may disagree with most of them, on both sides, I can respect the fact that they are doing a job that is often unpopular.

Tom Delay is an exception.  He is a petty power monger who is willing to say anything to remain in power.  

Can't ignore Ronnie Earle's track record.  He's fired off high-profile indictments of political opponents before.

The indictment itself is very short on facts.

As much as I would love for Tom DeLay to quietly fade away from the national spotlight, having him resign over trumped-up and quite possibly fraudulent charges would be a mistake of the highest order.

Trevino is right, he is a liability. However, if he were to step down on these charges he'd be creating an even bigger one.

Given the adage that politics is a slightly more polite version of warfare, what Trevino proposes is another Munich. Bowing to politically-oriented prosecutions like that is only going to emboldened more shamelessly partisan hacks like Earle to go after other Republican leaders with trumped-up charges.

Supporting DeLay may make many of us want to take a shower afterwards, but it's ultimately necessary to prevent others more noble from suffering the same fate.

I would have been happy to see DeLay resign some time ago.  His unscrupulous nature was plain enough, and his part in harming the nation with the Medicare bill was inexcusable.

That being said, Jay is right that you can't just toss folks overboard based upon politically-motivated prosecutions.  What could have been done, then?

Well, we could have refrained from the mindless pro-DeLay fervor that gripped folks a few months back.  We could have never even considered changing rules -- that we implemented a decade ago in response to Dem malfeasance! -- to protect the man.  We could have acted with some rectitude rather than allowing loyalty to trump all.

That's a sensible middle ground, I think.

The politicians and Republican big-shots who rallied around Tom DeLay did not do so because they thought it was brilliant to chain the conservative movement to him.  They did so because, until the day he takes a fall, it's dangerous to choose the opposite side from him.

Of course DeLay is a bully but no one has ever questioned his effectiveness in building a political machine.  He got Texas redistricted, he got a lot of people elected, he put a lot of money in people's pockets, and now a lot of people owe him favors.

RS is an independent organ and it's easy to say, "the conservative movement is not dependent on this individual, ditch him for someone better."  But in the real world, a guy is not going to rise to leadership and achieve his kind of power without collecting favors, and it's not realistic to expect the party will throw him overboard the moment he outlives his usefulness.

You can bemoan the fact that politics works like this, but it always will.

We know we have had a very effective majority leader (DeLay) who we know has had a bullseye on his back.  We know that a prosecutor with a track record of partisan allegations was going into this.

Elbows get thrown in politics.  And there have been far worse outrages than what Tom DeLay is accused of doing.  What he is guilty of is darn good hardball politics.  Sorry, I'm not going to string him up for that.  If we did, we'd be out of politicians.

When you have the law on your side, argue the law.

When you have the facts on your side argue the facts.

When you have neither, pound the table and speak loudly and angrily.

So far all I've heard from Mr. DeLay is a lot of anger, volume, and noise.  I'm not impressed.

As much as I despise the idea of Roy Blunt being given any more authority than keeping track of the crayons at recess, perhaps it would be best if Mr. DeLay were to quietly fade away between now and the end of the year.

Thanks Josh.  Time to find a replacement who can show how a government should work.

Politics is generally what happens when principles have a very forceful meeting with the 18-wheeler we call reality.

It usually isn't very pretty.

But a premature saying. Wander the blogosphere and find the facts involved. There aren't many, if any, in the indictment.

Same goes for the law.

If the facts and the law aren't involved, why not pound the table and speak loudly.

When the prosecutor presents evidence, I suspect Delay and his attorney will reply. As for the alleged violation of the law, join the crowd - I'd bet hundreds we're involved in this conspiracy, but then calling it a conspiracy shouldn't prevent others from calling it the right to assemble and exercise their free speech. I'll bet a judge will be asked to rule on the law as far as that goes.

Meanwhile, it's press conferences at ten paces, dawn to dusk, rinse and repeat.

I've wandered all day, I've read it all.  I understand that it's almost certainly bogus.

But DeLay's statement was the equivalent of a temper tantrum and I thought he was badly served by it.

As are conservatives and Republicans.

He deserves his day in court, and he deserves that day to be soon.

But if this thing drags past January of 06 and there's nothing more clear than what we've seen today, we're in for a bad November.

It's beginning to look a lot like 1994 to me.  Frist, Rove, Abramoff, DeLay.

Yeah a lot of it is b.s., a lot of it is for partisan gain by the Dems, but it don't look good to have all this smoke.

Throw on to that the lack of fiscal discipline, uncertainty in the President's agenda, and we're in a bad way.

2006 elections are way off, and people remember generalities. So far, everything bad about Delay is a generality - namely - he's bad. I don't think the "he's bad" platform is a winner for the democrats, until and unless he's convicted of something more specific than "badness".

Meanwhile - your closing sentence is the problem, and that's a wash as far as Delay, Frist, POTUS are concerned - there's time to fix it, and there's time to let it turn into a real voter drag.

I have to ask, what the heck are you doing, here? Was it really necessary of you to come over here and poke Krempasky in the eye with your pointy stick there? As far as I can tell, you've wrapped "neener neener neener" into your remarkable command of the English language and dressed up in a nice, pretty post.

You'll always be a better writer than me, and probably smarter than me, too. Some of the stuff you've written I still consider to be the de facto statement on the matter. But I gotta be honest, I'm less than impressed with this.

It's pretty clear to everybody who's paying attention by now (before the comments even started) that you and Krempasky have some personal issues. Fine. Work them out personally, for God's sakes.

And I'll tell you something else - there's nothing to neener neener neener about, here. Have you read the indictment? Have you considered the evidence? Which, do you think, is better for the Republican party? A Majority Leader who is pressured out of office presumably under a cloud of suspicion (which is how it would have been reported three months ago, regardless of whatever the real reasons might have been), or having this indictment out in the open where there is a final possibility (probability) of exoneration, rather than an endless could of suspicion and innuendo?

If you're not a Tom DeLay fan, this is probably the worst thing that could happen to you - because the overwhelming odds are that he beats this indictment, and in a wave of triumph returns with more power than he had before. If we are going to eat our own (and I frontpaged a call for Frist's resignation as SML three days ago), it should at least work to our purposes, not that of the enemy.

But all of that aside, you could have made your "point," such as it is, in a completely different and more respectable manner. You did not. What does that tell us about what you value most?

In what way has DeLay been effective?

And for whom?

I'm pretty sure Krempasky can handle himself just fine, and I doubt his day is ruined by this Diary.  I'm also pretty sure I didn't write this with the thought that now, NOW vindication is mine.

Look, the self-appointed movement leadership's decision to throw itself behind DeLay was a big deal.  It was pretty clearly wrong to do so then; and it's even more clearly wrong now.  If you're going to argue that this shouldn't be pointed out simply because one of the RS editors was a wholehearted participant in the debacle, well, okay.  It's unwise, but okay.

Keep this in mind: having strenuously advocated more than my own share of bad policy decisions (chief among them the invasion of Iraq), I am pretty sure that criticism of those decisions is personal criticism of me only inasmuch as I allow it to be.  That's politics.  It ain't personal: confusing the two is a classic, and regrettable, Beltway error.

My point was not that Krempasky cannot handle himself, or that his day is ruined, and I think you know that. If you walked up to me and spit in my face, I'd survive the experience, but it would be rude and inconsiderate nonetheless.

I'm also pretty sure I didn't write this with the thought that now, NOW vindication is mine.

One wonders, then, why you chose Mike Krempasky's piece over all others to link first in your story. Especially given that there were many more prominent and strident defenders of DeLay in both the Republican Party and on the internet.

Look, the self-appointed movement leadership's decision to throw itself behind DeLay was a big deal.  It was pretty clearly wrong to do so then; and it's even more clearly wrong now.  If you're going to argue that this shouldn't be pointed out simply because one of the RS editors was a wholehearted participant in the debacle, well, okay.  It's unwise, but okay.

Again you attribute to me positions that are not mine. I disagree that your position is correct in principle, I outlined that already. But I also made very clear that if you believe your point is valid, there are other ways to make it than the one you chose.

Keep this in mind: having strenuously advocated more than my own share of bad policy decisions (chief among them the invasion of Iraq), I am pretty sure that criticism of those decisions is personal criticism of me only inasmuch as I allow it to be.  That's politics.  It ain't personal: confusing the two is a classic, and regrettable, Beltway error.

Given the aforementioned command of the English language you posses, I'm sure you're aware that calling someone a "true believer" isn't "criticizing someone's decision." I think Wikipedia captures it pretty nicely.

It was linked fourth; it was by an attendee at the rally; it was an RS piece; I was familiar with it; and I thought it encapsulated the relevant mindset quite well.

Sorry, this isn't what you think it is.

You are correct that the elections are way off and people do remember generalities.

But think about the generalities we focused on in 1993.  Remember the House Bank Scandal?  Dan Rostenkowski?

We used to be the party that stood for competent government, ethical rectitude, and a clear agenda for the nation.

Competent government, hmmm.  Katrina is being blamed on Bush, the Congress can't seem to resist one boondoggle after another (Prescription drugs, Transportation, etc and etc).  At some point the House Visitor Center will make its way back to the MSM eye, and that's a scandal waiting to be exposed.

Ethical rectitude, well.  We started this Congress trying to pass a rule that an indicted member of Congress could still serve as a leader.  Nice.  The Dems forced us to take that back, thankfully.  But we still don't have a functioning ethics committee in the House.  (yeah yeah blame the dems, but we're in charge aren't we?  That's the message that gets out.)  Abramoff, Rove, Frist, DeLay, Cunningham, Ohio GOP, Fletcher from KY, it just doesn't look good.  Throw in the easy charges of Bush cronyism and we've got a mess of something.

A clear agenda.  What exactly is it?  Tax cuts, ok.  What else?  Limited government?  Nope.  War on Terror, ok, but people aren't thrilled with that anymore, effective programs?  Name one we've passed in the majority.  

It's the perception problem that worries me.  DeLay had no problem tossing Newt to the side when Newt became a liability.  History does repeat itself.

Well, that's the rub, ain't it? If you want to make the case that I was pretty clearly wrong to believe that DeLay has made a career out of stumping the Democrats at every turn, at supporting the conservative movement for decades (and put aside this "self-appointed" garbage for a moment - these people changed the country while you and I went through life arguing about nonsense on the Internet), and pushed for every good thing that the Republicans have done - then make that case. But feel free to actually bring some facts informed by a timeframe longer than tacitus.org's lifespan.

DeLay's not perfect - I've hardly said that. DeLay is, however, damn effective. And not only is he the most effective Washington operator since Tip O'Neill - he is, in large part - our guy.

And to these charges today - it was explained to you six months ago how baseless this trash is, what sort of person Ronnie Earle is - and yet you still want to throw up your hands, pronounce him unfit based on this Democrat victory - and claim the high ground.

But I'm also reminded of your effort to dump a candidate in the middle of a race because of charges that his opponent made during the campaign. Charges that turned out to be nothing more than a political brick thrown at our guy's head.

Josh - you're a bright guy. One of the brightest I've ever met. You're certainly talented, and believe all the right things.

I just think you're too quick to believe the other side - and to believe the worst about our side.

"Don't confuse the questions with the answers"

In your entire list, I see one serious "crime" that should be prosecuted, one enormous ethical mess, and a series of accusations ranging from the questionable to the silly. Add in the "easy charges" and a "mess of something" and you've created a political soup with very little meat.

Far be it from me to advise the democrats, but the ugliest, guiltiest republican around is completely unmentioned - Bribes, cover-ups, conspiracy, cronies already in jail, and innocents dead - all in one man and one administration. Not a peep.

That said - this time next year the MSM may still be yammering on about items on your list, next year's weather, or who knows whats invasion of where.

Meanwhile, will the democrats have an issue other than "not them"?

I think I've been pretty clear that my dislike for DeLay is not merely a case of "pronounc[ing] him unfit based on this Democrat victory."  Beyond that, I'm not sure what new there is to say: you like him, and I don't.  We may value different things; or you simply may be better-informed than I.  Either case seems plausible to me.

As for the referred-to "effort to dump a candidate in the middle of a race," I assume you mean my doubling-back on Coburn after his alleged penchant for undocumented sterilizations of minors emerged.  I'm unaware that he disavowed his admission to having done so; but if he has, or if it were misreported, great.  That's my hope.  If it's accurate, though, then I continue to believe it a creepy and unethical thing, and not the sort of deed I'd want in the past of a candidate under my endorsement.

That being said, I would remind you that I acceded to the RS majority decision in that case, and did not then make my unease public.

You're right that I'm among the least inclined to cheerlead amongst the current and former RS editors.  Part of my own vision for this site at its founding was a Republican community where people of good faith and a sincere interest in the party's well-being could subject it to rigorous criticism in the assurance of that general sincerity.  Sometimes -- often, even -- that critique coincides with the critique of our partisan foes.  I don't find that particularly disconcerting, for the most part: our view of the good shouldn't be predicated upon theirs in any case.  If that comes across as too-eager readiness to believe them, so be it.  I've taken down my share of their talking points, from AIDS to Iraq to Katrina to Cornyn to tsunami relief to Kerry.  In light of this, that I would not be given the benefit of the doubt, and that there is clearly a belief that I posted this Diary merely to gloat, is, to me, baffling.

[Yeah, I capitalized that on purpose]...DeLay had the presence of mind (through the fog of his over-ambitious personality) to resign from his Majority Leader position post haste following his official indictment.  Could he at least be given credit for that?

Of course, while I agree it is/was stupid for the conservative movement to "hitch its wagon" to DeLay's defense, we should continue to bear in mind the nature of the prosecutor (Earle) and take everything with a grain of salt, not flagellating ourselves for even thinking of defending DeLay.

I am willing to concede the notion that Tom DeLay generally operates without the ideological principles that most conservatives would prefer in a majority leader.  I am even willing to concede (again, only for the sake of argument) that it is in the political interests of the House GOP to abandon him once and for all. Heck, for the sake of argument, let's start with the assumption that Tom DeLay is a commie-pinko plant inserted into the conservative movement to lead us astray and befuddle us with Jedi mind games.

But I will not concede one inch to the author on the moral question involved. On that question his argument is backward and capricious. It is the equivalent of conservative cannibalism, something for which he has sadly demonstrated a taste. The author admits the probability that "Tom DeLay will be acquitted of the single charge against him, and rightly so."  I will go further and say that DeLay may have grounds for a lawsuit that should ruin Ronnie Earle's career. But all that is peripheral. To jettison a leader whom you've stuck with for years, in spite of ideological disagreements, only because he's the target of legal machinations that you know are dishonest, is blatant hypocrisy.  More than that, it is moral cowardice.

If Tom DeLay has broken the law in any way, if he really did facilitate the illegal transfer of funds from corporations to the RNC by way of his TRM PAC (which is the actual charge, if anyone cares about such legal niceties), then dump him. But the author doesn't even pretend that such is the case. Indeed, it would be very hard for him to pretend that since, absent a confession by DeLay himself, a conviction is barely conceivable. No, the argument in this diary is that we should turn on our own even when we know they're innocent, because it is expedient to do so. Even as a pragmatic argument, this might be generously described as a counterintuitive position, since it would allow crusading Democratic prosecutors to end the careers of conservative congressmen at will. But as a moral argument it is incoherent, and that is sad, coming from somebody who claims to have the "interests of conservatism at heart."

I'm categorically not saying that DeLay is guilty of the crime that he's been accused of.  Oh wait, he hasn't actually been accused of committing anything really, as far as I can tell.

To me it's entirely a question of perception.  I have zero faith that the Dems and the MSM (but I repeat myself) won't hype this for as long as possible to cause as much damage as possible.  I do recognize that there are 13 months to go, and to ask the Dems or the MSM to focus on one thing for that long is impossible, but taken as a whole, especially without context, the message that is getting across through the MSM is the corruption.

Sometimes you need to have an agenda to convince people to switch sides, sometimes you just need to be 'not him.'

I agree that the Dems don't actually have an agenda, and won't have anything other than being 'not them' or 'doing it better' which is a hard sell in normal times.

But the base is leery of the massive spending, lack of progress on key issues, and infighting in preparation for the 08 election.  If Bush doesn't appoint a home run for the next SCOTUS spot, or say Roberts votes the politically incorrect way (but legally sound) on any number of important cases before the Court, the base will deflate and not show up.  Say Bush gets a case of stupid and nominates AGAG.  We might as well give Pelosi the keys to the Speaker's office now, save the heartache.

When Newt was asked to leave, he hadn't committed a crime, he was reprimanded by the ethics committee and asked to pay a fine and change his book deal.  He was the fricking Speaker of the House and the guy who brought us to the Promised Land of the majority.  But we recognized that he was a bigger liability than an asset and that the party was bigger than just one man.

There are dozens of folks who would make a good Majority Leader or future speaker: John Boehner and Tom Reynolds spring to mind quite easily.  I'm sure that there are others.

Politics ain't beanbag, sometimes it certainly isn't fair, but sometimes you take one for the team.

Which brings to mind this old quote:

"The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason."

Given this:

We knew all along that Tom DeLay was a bully...We knew all along that he was, on a fundamental level, unprincipled...We knew all along that he was mostly interested in power for its own sake...

What justifies this:

On a legal level, he is almost certainly guilty of nothing more than a poor choice of friends.

The foregoing implies that the other indictments are valid and that the unprinicpled, power-hungry bully is only tainted by his ill-advised associations with his friends. I heard of having it both ways; but three ways?

The point isn't that the Dems would continue pursuing DeLay. It's that they'd smell blood in the water and go after whoever succeeds DeLay.

They're not doing this out of any principled belief that government should be cleaned up; they're doing this for sport and to prevent the Republicans from pushing through their agenda, and I anticipate that they'd do similar things to any replacement. Fact is, we've all got skeletons in the closet and people who didn't like us in high school.

Now my personal opinion is that in an ideal world, DeLay wouldn't have had such a huge store of capital last Fall before the Dems started harping, and that the RSC and the moderate anti-pork element threw him out and replaced him with someone more principled.

But that didn't happen, so good conservatives had to make a choice between having an unprincipled leadership with whom they had some influence or an unprincipled leadership with whom they had no influence.

Unfortunately more often than not they involve forcing conservatives to talk the plank.

The left made a killing off of DeLay. The DNC had his picture, with a request for donations directly under, on their homepage for quite some time. In fact, it's there now. Other lefty websites such as moveon.org also had his image on their front page, and they made some good money at his expense. I'm not very knowledgeable about GOP politics, but he's surely a liability, judging by the fundraising potential he gives the Dems.

However, allowing DeLay to collapse without a fight from the right may have its implications. Perhaps that will send a message to the left, as some have already said. When Senator Durbin made his comments about Gitmo, we were divided over at Dkos. Some of us thought he shouldn't have apologized because it sent a message to the right, suggesting we're weak. Nevertheless, others thought he would have weakened with voters as his comments certainly angered many voters. I know this is a bad comparison, but I feel it gets the point across. For the purpose of clarity, I will say that whatever the GOP does with DeLay should be handled with its voting base in mind. How will voters react to supporting or abandoning DeLay?

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he sought a House rules change to protect his leadership position

It is actually a GOP rule, not a House rule. The House Dems have no such rule.

I believe in strategic calculations, I won't begrude you for them.

However, they do get complicated and confusing.

It's not so much that we can't wander hallways of imperfect ethics, we must, I believe, for the world and we are not perfect.

The solution, and I assume this will make sense to you from what I know of your sense of honor, is going to home base, ethical home base.

IOW, when it gets really confusing what the best strategy is when you have a problematic leader, forr example, what can you do... there is a point where the strategy is so complex, with so many different factors, guesses and unknowns, you have to rewind, and just decide what the right thing to do with this kind of person.  There is always a cost, but it's the illusion of searching for strategies that makes us forget that once a real strategy is found (as opposed to the Holy Grail of perfect strategies)... it too imposes costs and risks, and at least the principled path leads to moral strength and often, the costs are natural or at least... have a real reason when nevertheless unfair.

And lest you think I'm just talking about DeLay, no, this is what I've been thinking about Democratic strategy... both these parties suffer the far-too-clever thinking required to protect those that... really, ought not be.

When we think of our liabilities... we what? don't want them outed?  Because it looks bad.  But if it looks bad... isn't it really bad? And if it's really bad, who is it bad for?

I've always thought it's bad for the people sharing a party. A corrupt person in my neighbors house, bad as that is, is better than in MY house. I don't subscribe to the theory that our crooks help us and only hurt "them"... my experience says these drains are drains on those around them, and if anything the closer you are the worse it is.  Now if you are very very close, there may be faustian bargains of the too-sweet-to-refuse variety... but in a political party, only a few are THAT close.

you know what... good luck solving this problem, I believe in health.

health is always good.

I don't fear a healthy Republican party!  Good luck solving this little problem... actually solving it.

Just a quick thought:

If every member of the republican party that has been accused and attacked by the left resigned we would have a party turnover rate of 650% every election cycle.

If I am innocent of the charges then quitting is not an option.