‘They just care about power’

July 10, 2006

When it comes to the 22nd congressional district, [tag]Texas[/tag] [tag]Republicans[/tag] are in a bit of a jam. [tag]Tom DeLay[/tag]’s attempted stunt to get himself taken off the ballot was rejected by a federal judge last week, and now, after the appeals finish, the GOP is looking at a three-month campaign with a scandal-plagued candidate who tried to quit. It’s an uphill climb.

But it’s nevertheless stunning to hear Republicans whine incessantly about their state of affairs. Today’s Roll Call included what has to be one of my favorite [tag]GOP[/tag] quotes in a long while.

“This is election by litigation. You just wonder why we even have elections at all,” said attorney Jim [tag]Bopp[/tag], who argued the ballot case for the Texas Republican Party. “It’s just an effort to steal a seat. [Democrats] don’t care about voter choice or democracy, they just care about power.”

Bopp did not appear to be kidding.

Let me get this straight: DeLay orchestrates a scheme to redraw the state’s districts in order to fix a series of House races for the GOP. While executing the scheme, DeLay illegally uses federal resources to track down Dems in the state legislature. Lawyers at the Justice Department conclude that DeLay’s map violates the voting rights act, but their Bush-appointed superiors overrule them.

More recently, DeLay, under criminal indictment, runs in a GOP primary, stating his commitment to the district. Immediately after winning said primary, DeLay falsely claims to have moved to Virginia in order to disqualify himself from the race, hoping to give power to a handful of party activists to chose his replacement.

A judge sees through the nonsense — prompting DeLay’s lawyer to say Democrats are trying to steal an election, don’t care about democracy, and “just care about power.”

I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.

I’m sorry. This is off topic, but I just read this comment by John Derbyshire at the Corner in a discussion about immigration:

“The U.S.A. was born with two race problems: the African Americans and the Native Americans.”

Yes, those pesky African Americans and American Indians have been quite a problem.

He is arguing that we shouldn’t bring any more immigrants that are a ‘visibly identifiable minority’ because they would then become a ‘problem’.

Thanks for allowing me to let off a little steam.

  • “I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.” – CB

    Yep, it takes Republican’t lawyers like Jim Bopp to come up with lies like this.

    It’s nice to see the Texas Mafia twisting in the wind down in Texas. I think you make a good point about how DeLay running in the primary denied ‘other’ Republicans from democratically chosing an alternative to the Texas Mafia’s favored corrupted pol to succeed him.

  • ‘They just care about power’

    Proving once again that if you want to know what the republican party is all about, you only need listen to what they accuse Democrats of doing.

  • I think JoeW got it right. The Repubs are a party of Freudian Slips. It’s quotes like Tom Delay’s that really makes me wonder about their objections to gay marriage. You know how if they allow gay marriage then polygamists and any type of sexual “freak” will take advantage of it… Is this a cry for help?

  • I’m with dajafi. Watch Delay run and win. They may not even have to fake the vote count.

  • “Bopp did not appear to be kidding.” That, to me, is the truly scary part here. Increasingly, we seem to be talking not so much across a political divide but a perceptual divide. We look at the same events and come to opposite conclusions. It’s as if we’re talking past one another in different languages — making it impossible to resolve our differences in any reasonable, rational manner. Carrying this to it’s logical conclusion, are we on the path to some sort of civil war based not on class, or race, or religion, but perspectives on how each of us relate to the world? God help us.

  • I think beep52 is on to something. I have been looking into how educated, intelligent people can adopt such behavior. “The sun is yellow,… NO the sun is BLUE!!”
    ” Jesus said , I believe it, that settles it.” and so forth.
    I can only conclude that fearful, spoiled little children, abandoned by their wealthy parents, to be raised by underpaid strangers, ridiculed by smart kids, educated that money is the only answer to anything, have found a way to lash back at the one thing they cannot buy – reason.

    The intentional underfunding of public education has come to fruition.

  • “It’s Texas; they hate our freedoms.” – dajafi

    Actually, they hated Mexicans’ freedoms, including freedom from slavery, so they revolted and eventually joined the United States of America, where they could keep slaves. And of course, they revolted again when they thought they couldn’t extend slavery to Arizona and New Mexico (that was the Republican platform in 1860). So as you say, they hate freedoms (other than their own, of course).

  • You forgot that the judge who backed the Democrat’s “disregard for voter choice” is a GOP appointee. Yeah, they guy who said the choice of the voters had to stay on the ballot to be presented to all the voters, is a Republican buying into the Democrat’s interference with voter choice?

    I think the root cause of the partisan divide is a wholesale substitution of irony for policy.

  • Be that as it may, I think that DeLay will actually swim against the tide and win his district against Lampson.

    But then again, he’ll find himself the head of a shrunken party in 2007 to 2008 given that all his compatriots and peers are gone.

  • Don’t forget that Delay was planning on using the money from his “re-election campaign” to pay off his legal bills. It was, is, and always will be about the money when it comes to Republicans.

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