GOP's Power Play (using tactics they once criticized)

[kskiska]

Goal of Reforms in House Gives Way to Tough Tactics Party Once Criticized

Nearly 10 years after winning control of the House by vowing a fairer and more open Congress, Republicans have tossed aside many of the institutional reforms they promised, increasingly employing hard-nosed tactics they decried a decade ago, according to numerous lawmakers and scholars.

Among the reforms championed by an earlier generation of House Republicans, and subsequently dropped or weakened: term limits for rank-and-file members as well as committee chairmen; stricter ethics laws; and greater power for individual members and the minority party.

Republicans have instead consolidated power in the hands of a few leaders, most notably Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (Ill.) and Majority Leader Tom DeLay (Tex.). In the process, the authority of committee chairmen and influence of rank-and-file members has waned.

Republican leaders have cracked down on GOP lawmakers who oppose them, creating a culture in which Republicans often fear bucking the party line.

And, increasingly, they have systematically prevented Democrats from offering ideas and amendments in committee or on the House floor -- a tactic DeLay, when he was in the minority, called the "arrogance of power."

more…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48278-2003Jul25.html

[benfranklin1776]

1. Well time to turn the tables....

.....and make his smarmy, arrogant, heavy handed, dictatorial abuse of power an issue. The recent principled and courageous standing of their ground by the members of the Ways and Means Committee is exactly the type of hard nosed response to his oily machinations that is needed.

[hedda_foil]

2. Ooooh. Page One!

Nice. Very nice indeed.