{"id":3980,"date":"2005-04-15T12:14:07","date_gmt":"2005-04-15T16:14:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/3980.html"},"modified":"2005-04-15T12:14:07","modified_gmt":"2005-04-15T16:14:07","slug":"thats-two-do-i-hear-three","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/thats-two-do-i-hear-three\/","title":{"rendered":"That&#8217;s two, do I hear three?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Less than a week ago, Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.) <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2005\/POLITICS\/04\/10\/delay.ap\/index.html\">called Tom DeLay<\/a> an &#8220;embarrassment to me and to the Republican Party&#8221; and publicly called on him to resign as Majority Leader. Many waited anxiously to see who, if anyone, would follow Shays&#8217; lead. Days went by, but more GOP ire was directed at Shays than DeLay.<\/p>\n<p>Today, however, a second skeptic <a href=\"http:\/\/www.denverpost.com\/Stories\/0,1413,36%7E11676%7E2817542,00.html\">has come forward<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) says it is &#8220;probably not the worst idea&#8221; for embattled House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to step down while he deals with ethics allegations. <\/p>\n<p>Stepping into a swirling Washington controversy, the Littleton Republican said he doesn&#8217;t think the current accusations of impropriety against DeLay amount to much. But Tancredo said that from a political perspective, DeLay has handled the ethics issue &#8220;stupidly.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think we should try to oust him,&#8221; he said in an interview Thursday at the Capitol. &#8220;Right now, I would not encourage him to leave. If he chose to resign as majority leader until these matters are resolved, that&#8217;s probably not the worst idea.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Granted, that&#8217;s not exactly a sweeping condemnation. But in this environment, with heightened sensitivity in light of DeLay&#8217;s precarious state, every comment like this has a lot more meaning. Tancredo surely knows this, which makes his suggestion all the more significant.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, Shays is considered a RINO in Republican circles, so his recent outburst was easily ignored by the House caucus. Tancredo, meanwhile, is a right-wing nut with conservative &#8220;street cred.&#8221; If he thinks DeLay&#8217;s resignation is a  decent idea, it&#8217;s likely to be taken far more seriously than Shays&#8217; concerns.<\/p>\n<p>So, who&#8217;ll be number three?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Less than a week ago, Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.) called Tom DeLay an &#8220;embarrassment to me and to the Republican Party&#8221; and publicly called on him to resign as Majority Leader. Many waited anxiously to see who, if anyone, would follow Shays&#8217; lead. Days went by, but more GOP ire was directed at Shays than [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3980","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3980\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}