[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: Tom DeLay's Self-Ruination

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Tom DeLay's Self-Ruination

October 8, 2004
 


 

The overweening partisanship that drives Tom DeLay's
dominance as the House majority leader is threatening to
unravel his career. For the second time in a week, the
normally timid ethics committee has admonished Mr. DeLay,
finding that he exceeded acceptable conduct in the heated
pursuit of corporate donations and in engineering an unfair
edge over rival Democrats. For all his clout, the panel
warned Mr. DeLay, a Texas Republican, to "temper your
future actions" or face graver chastisement. 

The bipartisan rebuke is extraordinary, but it hardly puts
to rest Mr. DeLay's use of power as a partisan cudgel. The
panel only bolstered the case for an outside counsel to
investigate his ethical lapses. The most serious charge by
the Democrats - that Mr. DeLay illegally laundered campaign
money to help Texas Republicans - was put aside by the
ethics panel because of a state investigation in which
three DeLay aides have been indicted. 

Mr. DeLay was faulted for fund-raising at a golf tournament
run by an energy company whose lobbyists curried special
favors in a pending energy bill. He was also rebuked for
siccing federal investigators onto Democratic state
legislators who had fled Texas in an attempt to stall a
gerrymandering plan he had orchestrated to bolster his edge
in Washington. Last week, the ethics panel admonished Mr.
DeLay for excessive arm-twisting as the Medicare
prescription bill foundered last year: he privately offered
to help the political career of a wavering Republican's
son. Five years earlier, Mr. DeLay, ever the tooth-and-claw
partisan, drew a rebuke for warning a trade group not to
hire a Democrat as its top Washington lobbyist. 

Mr. DeLay has dismissed all the complaints as rooted in the
"venom" of partisan Democrats opposed to his legitimate
pursuit of the G.O.P.'s agenda. The ethics panel, however,
warned that "overaggressive pursuit" of that agenda "does
not constitute a mitigating factor" for his abusive
behavior. This amounts to a warning for a tainted and much
feared leader to either straighten up or step aside. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/08/opinion/08fri3.html?ex=1098257677&ei=1&en=7dc1dafa1257ca34


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