Martin Schram: Republicans now seeing the truth — and danger — about DeLay

[struggle4progress]

Washington Republicans are beginning to understand that Tom Delay has become the poster politician for what's wrong with ethics in Washington.

By MARTIN SCHRAM, [e-mail]
March 31, 2005


Belatedly but undeniably, Washington's Republicans are beginning to see the light. They see it every time they look into a mirror — and see the unsmiling, unapologetic mug of Tom DeLay looking back at them.

The House Majority Hammer has become the face of Republican Ethics — and it is not a pretty face. Politically, it is a downright ugly face, and finally, Republicans are beginning to get it. First on Main Street, then on K Street and finally, last Monday, on Wall Street, Republicans have been saying things that show they understand what regular people understood before them. DeLay has made himself the poster-pol for Washington's standard ethical double standard: What is OK for me is attackable for you. Or, as I've said before: Ethics DeLayed is ethics denied. <snip>

That is why Republicans who are now rushing to disassociate themselves from DeLay also sought to disassociate themselves from their own ethically indefensible actions when they chose to silently follow their speaker to protect their leader. <snip>

In one, DeLay offered to endorse a retiring GOP congressman's son in a primary if the representative voted for the Medicare prescription drug bill. DeLay also sought to use the Federal Aviation Administration for political purposes back home in Texas, and he promised access to special interests at campaign fund-raisers. <snip>

http://www.naplesnews.com/npdn/pe_columnists/article/0,2071,NPDN_14960_3660673,00.html

[Mr Rabble]

1. yet another account of the bug man's

disgusting behavior, which sadly will go totally un-noticed by our fellow citizens.

No chance in hell of seeing a real story about this on TV news.

[Demeter]

2. So Tell Me: How Does DeLay Differ From W?

They are like two peas in a pod. They both have to be forcibly removed from power, now, if not sooner.

[Skittles]

3. tell me about it

they are just now beginning to "see the light"? BULLSHIT. He is a f***ing slimy republican, pure and simple. He always has been one of them.

[MissWaverly]

4. They have not had a sudden inspiration

They have alienated their base over Terri Schiavo, they could give a rat's tail if DeLay has turned our legislative process into cash and carry government, they just want to maintain their popularity, (i.e. get reelected in '06 so they can keep raking in the bribes).

[Coastie for Truth]

5. DeLay is what Robert Reich calls "Rot At The Top"

See: "The Lost Art of Democratic Narrative: Story Time", The New Republic, March 28 & April 4, 2005, page 16, http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050328&s=reich032805

One can follow Reich's analysis to say that DeLay is {b]THE issue.

Reich talks about "four stories" of American political folklore-

1. The Triumphant Individual
2. The Benevolent Community
3. The Mob At The Gates
4. The Rot At The Top.

Which Reich describes thusly--

"There are four essential American stories. The first two are about hope; the second two are about fear.

The Triumphant Individual. This is the familiar tale of the little guy who works hard, takes risks, believes in himself, and eventually gains wealth, fame, and honor. It's the story of the self-made man (or, more recently, woman) who bucks the odds, spurns the naysayers, and shows what can be done with enough gumption and guts. He's instantly recognizable: plainspoken, self-reliant, and uncompromising in his ideals--the underdog who makes it through hard work and faith in himself. Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography is the first in a long line of U.S. self-help manuals about how to make it through self-sacrifice and diligence. The story is epitomized in the life of Abe Lincoln, born in a log cabin, who believed that "the value of life is to improve one's condition." The theme was captured in Horatio Alger's hundred or so novellas, whose heroes all rise promptly and predictably from rags to riches. It's celebrated in the tales of immigrant peddlers who become millionaire tycoons. And it's found in the manifold stories of downtrodden fighters who undertake dangerous quests and find money and glory. Think Rocky Balboa, Norma Rae, and Erin Brockovich. The moral: With enough effort and courage, anyone can make it in the United States.


The Benevolent Community. This is the story of neighbors and friends who roll up their sleeves and pitch in for the common good. Its earliest formulation was John Winthrop's "A Model of Christian Charity," delivered on board a ship in Salem Harbor just before the Puritans landed in 1630--a version of Matthew's Sermon on the Mount, in which the new settlers would be "as a City upon a Hill," "delight in each other," and be "of the same body." Similar communitarian and religious images were found among the abolitionists, suffragettes, and civil rights activists of the 1950s and 1960s. "I have a dream that every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low," said Martin Luther King Jr., extolling the ideal of the national community. The story is captured in the iconic New England town meeting, in frontier settlers erecting one another's barns, in neighbors volunteering as firefighters and librarians, and in small towns sending their high school achievers to college and their boys off to fight foreign wars. It suffuses Norman Rockwell's paintings and Frank Capra's movies. Consider the last scene in It's a Wonderful Life, when George learns he can count on his neighbors' generosity and goodness, just as they had always counted on him.

The Mob at the Gates. In this story, the United States is a beacon light of virtue in a world of darkness, uniquely blessed but continuously endangered by foreign menaces. Hence our endless efforts to contain the barbarism and tyranny beyond our borders. Daniel Boone fought Indians--white America's first evil empire. Davy Crockett battled Mexicans. The story is found in the Whig's anti-English and pro-tariff histories of the United States, in the anti immigration harangues of the late nineteenth century, and in World War II accounts of Nazi and Japanese barbarism. It animates modern epics about space explorers (often sporting the stars and stripes) battling alien creatures bent on destroying the world. The narrative gave special force to cold war tales during the '50s of an international communist plot to undermine U.S. democracy and subsequently of "evil" empires and axes. The underlying lesson: We must maintain vigilance, lest diabolical forces overwhelm us.

The Rot at the Top. The last story concerns the malevolence of powerful elites. It's a tale of corruption, decadence, and irresponsibility in high places--of conspiracy against the common citizen. It started with King George III, and, to this day, it shapes the way we view government--mostly with distrust. The great bullies of American fiction have often symbolized Rot at the Top: William Faulkner's Flem Snopes, Willie Stark as the Huey Long-like character in All the King's Men, Lionel Barrymore's demonic Mr. Potter in It's a Wonderful Life, and the antagonists that hound the Joad family in The Grapes of Wrath. Suspicions about Rot at the Top have inspired what historian Richard Hofstadter called the paranoid style in U.S. politics--from the pre-Civil War Know-Nothings and Anti-Masonic movements through the Ku Klux Klan and Senator Joseph McCarthy's witch hunts. The myth has also given force to the great populist movements of U.S. history, from Andrew Jackson's attack on the Bank of the United States in the 1830s through William Jennings Bryan's prairie populism of the 1890s. "

DeLay's over-use of the Mob At The Gates against each and every Democrat and Democratic initiative and as cover for his own foul deeds -- and his own hypocrisy, fraud, and corruption have made DeLay the poster boy for Rot At The Top.

[struggle4progress]

6. Thanks! eom