So, we now have the House ethics rules restored and soon we’ll have a functioning Ethics Committee, ready to go to work. The first order of business will be dealing with Tom DeLay’s multiple peccadilloes, but what’s the second?
To hear some GOP lawmakers tell it, they’re looking for a full-blown “ethics war.”
Republican lawmakers who met yesterday to discuss a proposal by Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) to reverse changes to House ethics rules said it is inevitable that their colleagues will file complaints against Democrats once the ethics panel is again operational.
Republicans said that not one of their colleagues has volunteered to file a complaint against a Democrat but that they have no doubt that will in fact happen.
Some GOP legislators are upset that they were forced to back down on the ethics rules, handing House Democrats a huge political victory. Others, including Hastert, believed that keeping the rules in place would have inflicted significant, long-term damage on House Republicans.
“They’re angry about it,” Rep. Gil Gutknecht (R-Minn.) said as he walked out of the meeting.
One lawmaker, citing reports of alleged ethical transgressions filed by several Democratic lawmakers and aides, predicted that the ethics panel would begin probes of them once it was allowed to organize.
Expectations that Republicans will use the ethics committee, officially called the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, to retaliate against Democrats for — as Republicans see it — politicizing the House ethics rules raises the specter that an ethics committee will result in a partisan ethics war.
The idea that some Republicans think Dems have “politicized” the House ethics rules is downright hilarious. But irony aside, I think the likelihood of an actual ethics war is pretty slim.
Remember, a week ago Roll Call reported that party leaders were aware of some rank-and-file frustration, but have already decided that a full-blown partisan, chamber-wide ethics conflict would hurt Republicans far more than Dems.
With the two parties now trading allegations of impropriety on a near-daily basis, the House could be moving toward what many Republican strategists fear is a political trap: a full-fledged ethics war.
As the media has intensified its scrutiny of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), his GOP colleagues have scrambled to put his behavior in context by providing examples of Democrats taking questionable trips and doing alleged favors for big donors.
While that strategy may help the party blunt attacks on DeLay in the short term, some GOP strategists on and off Capitol Hill worry that they are playing into Democrats’ hands. According to this theory, if Congress grinds to a halt amid partisan bickering, the party in power will bear the brunt of the blame.
In a rare moment of agreement with Republican leaders, I think this is absolutely right. House conservatives are all worked up now because the Dems have beaten them badly on this issue over the last four months. But for all their talk about reprisals and retaliatory complaints, the GOP leadership knows full well this is a losing proposition for them.
Of course, what makes sense and what Republican lawmakers decide to do are not always compatible. If the GOP decides to go ethics-crazy, who will they target?
One Democrat who is likely to suffer from the reorganization of the ethics committee is Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), who is the target of a complaint filed in the last Congress by Rep. David Hobson (R-Ohio) alleging McDermott leaked sensitive ethics-panel material. […]
[Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), vice chairman of the Republican Conference] said it is inevitable that Republicans will file complaints against other Democrats. He cited reports that Reps. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) and Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-Ohio) took trips that were paid for by lobbyists, a violation of ethics rules, and that 10 aides in the Democratic leader’s office failed to report trips paid for by outside groups.
“The ethics committee is going to get organized, and when it does it’s going to get down to business,” Kingston said. When asked if he meant that it would investigate Democrats, Kingston said “absolutely.”
As the majority party that controls all of Washington, Republicans should realize this war is a losing proposition for them. But if they have their heart set on it, bring…it…on.