{"id":3056,"date":"2004-11-19T11:34:15","date_gmt":"2004-11-19T16:34:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/3056.html"},"modified":"2004-11-19T11:34:15","modified_gmt":"2004-11-19T16:34:15","slug":"the-flaw-in-creating-a-roll-call-on-the-delay-rule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-flaw-in-creating-a-roll-call-on-the-delay-rule\/","title":{"rendered":"The flaw in creating a roll call on the ‘DeLay Rule’"},"content":{"rendered":"

To their credit, Josh Marshall<\/a> and Daily DeLay<\/a> are doing yeomen’s work, tallying up which GOP House members supported changing House rules to allow indicted lawmakers (i.e., Tom DeLay) to serve in leadership posts. I’m concerned, however, that we’ll never really know for sure because, unlike a typical roll call vote, there’s no record of how lawmakers actually voted.<\/p>\n

Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.), who’s vague connection with DeLay nearly cost him his job<\/a> on Election Day, was the only Republican lawmaker who, at least at first, was willing to admit that he thought the rule change was a bad idea. After the vote, he said he was one of a “handful<\/a>” to oppose the new “DeLay Rule.” Of course, no one really knows what a “handful” entails, prompting Marshall and Daily DeLay to get to work.<\/p>\n

But here’s the rub: if lawmakers start to feel actual pressure over this, they can lie with impunity and not get caught. The rule change came during a private, secret meeting among the Republican House caucus. Not only was the vote on the “DeLay Rule” unrecorded; it was by voice vote<\/i>. In other words, there wasn’t even a formal tally to see how many lawmakers supported or opposed the change.<\/p>\n

Slowly but surely, this outrageous abuse is getting some attention. Newspapers are writing editorials condemning GOP lawmakers for their outrageous conduct, including items in Blue state papers (like the NY Times<\/a>), and Red state papers (including the Charleston Gazette<\/a>, Indianapolis Star<\/a>, and Roanoke Times<\/a>). People, in other words, are starting to learn about the stunt.<\/p>\n

If some GOP lawmakers are capable of shame or embarrassment, or more likely are just worried about appearing pro-corruption, they can easily just say they were part of Shays’ “handful” — and it’d be impossible to prove them wrong. As Michael Froomkin noted<\/a>:<\/p>\n

It would be amusing if a majority of the members of the Republican caucus claimed to have voted against, wouldn’t it?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Indeed it would.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To their credit, Josh Marshall and Daily DeLay are doing yeomen’s work, tallying up which GOP House members supported changing House rules to allow indicted lawmakers (i.e., Tom DeLay) to serve in leadership posts. I’m concerned, however, that we’ll never really know for sure because, unlike a typical roll call vote, there’s no record of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3056\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}