Just to follow up on the earlier post about the cracks in Tom DeLay’s once-solid façade, consider this admonishment in a major newspaper editorial today:
The problem…is that Mr. DeLay, who rode to power in 1994 on a wave of revulsion at the everyday ways of big government, has become the living exemplar of some of its worst habits. Mr. DeLay’s ties to Mr. Abramoff might be innocent, in a strictly legal sense, but it strains credulity to believe that Mr. DeLay found nothing strange with being included in Mr. Abramoff’s lavish junkets.
Nor does it seem very plausible that Mr. DeLay never considered the possibility that the mega-lucrative careers his former staffers Michael Scanlon and Mr. Buckham achieved after leaving his office had something to do with their perceived proximity to him. These people became rich as influence-peddlers in a government in which legislators like Mr. DeLay could make or break fortunes by tinkering with obscure rules and dispensing scads of money to this or that constituency. Rather than buck this system as he promised to do while in the minority, Mr. DeLay has become its undisputed and unapologetic master as Majority Leader.
Whether Mr. DeLay violated the small print of House Ethics or campaign-finance rules is thus largely beside the point. His real fault lies in betraying the broader set of principles that brought him into office, and which, if he continues as before, sooner or later will sweep him out.
And where does one find this liberal propaganda? The editorial page of today’s Wall Street Journal.
Granted, the editors, whose WSJ page is among the most conservative pieces of media real estate in the country, don’t think much of DeLay’s problems or accusers. Indeed, when considered in context, the WSJ editorial does its best to dismiss the individual complaints as trivial.
Nevertheless, taken together, the WSJ concludes DeLay has “odor issues” and has betrayed his movement’s basic principles. It’s also yet another example of flailing support for DeLay where there was once steadfast backing.
In other words, if DeLay’s lost the Wall Street Journal editorial page, he’s lost a sizable faction of the conservative Republican base.