Conservative Advocate: The slaughter of Tom DeLay
The Democrats in the House of Representatives are engaging in one of the oldest and best-established ceremonies of that distinguished body: the ritual slaughter of a prominent member.
There’s nothing distinctly Democratic about this process. Both parties have indulged in it before. The Republicans forced Speaker Jim Wright to resign from Congress for the high crime of selling a labor union several thousand copies of a potboiler he had written, for which it had no use save to enrich him. Not long thereafter, the Democrats retaliated by compelling their old enemy Newt Gingrich to step down as Speaker and resign from Congress for various alleged misdeeds.
Now the Democrats have fixed their sights on Republican majority leader Tom DeLay. He fills the bill almost perfectly. His political style tends to be domineering, and the Democrats and the media long ago nicknamed him “the Hammer.” Then, in the last year or two, he has sailed close enough to the wind to earn three “reprimands” — a sort of wrist-slapping — from the House Ethics Committee. Nobody has demonstrated that he has done anything illegal, but the cumulative effect of successive episodes of mild misbehavior, duly exaggerated by the Democrats and spread across the land by the media, have unquestionably damaged his image. Best of all from the Democratic standpoint, he is a stubborn and resolute man, and has blared defiance of his tormentors, vowing to face them down.
This leaves the Democrats in a perfect win-win situation. Either DeLay resigns under fire (in which case they can hang his scalp from their belt and brag about how they forced an evildoer to quit), or he can hang on as the Democrats beat the tom-toms and treat the congressional races of 2006 as a referendum on DeLay (“vote for the Democrat if you want DeLay to step down; vote Republican if you think he should stay on”).
House Republicans cannot possibly allow the latter situation to develop, that is, if they want to save their own hides. So, even though up till now they have almost unanimously stuck loyally with DeLay, they will sooner or later have to ask him to resign, unless the situation can somehow be transformed.
How might such a transformation be accomplished? I suggest that DeLay grant an exclusive interview to a friendly reporter, to whom he confesses that he has been going through a dark night of the soul. He sees, now, that his “leadership style” has been unnecessarily offensive and counterproductive. His missteps have been innocent ones, but they have been missteps nonetheless, and he cannot blame the Democrats for resenting them and taking advantage of them.
But now (he would say) he has realized the error of his ways. Henceforth, “the Hammer” will be seen no more. He will submit his every action, if in the least debatable, to prior review and approval by the House Ethics Committee. He can probably stop short of setting aside a small office, somewhere in the Capitol, where he can go to flagellate himself; but he must appeal to everyone — Republicans and Democrats alike — for forgiveness and understanding.
You may think such behavior would be extreme, and unconvincing to boot. But it would, unmistakably, shift the moral shoe (so to speak) to the other foot.
The Democrats, of course, would be sure it was all mere trickery. But they would have to be very careful about seeming to reject a genuinely abject apology. The American public doesn’t like people who are stubbornly determined to insist on their moral superiority, when others are trying to reform.
Is DeLay ready to eat a little, or a lot of, crow? It may be that, or back to Texas for him.
William Rusher is a Distinguished Fellow of the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy.