{"id":4378,"date":"2005-06-06T12:44:58","date_gmt":"2005-06-06T16:44:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/4378.html"},"modified":"2005-06-06T12:44:58","modified_gmt":"2005-06-06T16:44:58","slug":"house-republicans-are-looking-ahead-and-theyre-getting-nervous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/house-republicans-are-looking-ahead-and-theyre-getting-nervous\/","title":{"rendered":"House Republicans are looking ahead — and they’re getting nervous"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Washington Post’s Mike Allen had a terrific item<\/a> today about a phenomenon Republican strategists are calling “the DeLay effect” — the way in which questions surrounding Tom DeLay are starting to hurt his House GOP colleagues. This is exactly how the Dems hoped to capitalize on The Hammer’s scandals. It’s not just about one corrupt politician; it’s symptomatic of a caucus that has given up on ethics and abused its power.<\/p>\n

Democrats said they plan to capitalize on the junkets issue the same way Republicans leveraged the House bank check-bouncing scandal when they won control of Congress in 1994: as a vivid symbol, understandable to the average voter, of a majority party that has lost touch with voters. A series of polls in the past two months has shown broad dissatisfaction with Congress in general and the Republican leadership in particular, causing the party’s strategists to fret that conditions are ripe for change.<\/p>\n

Across the country, lawmakers are being peppered with unwelcome questions from news organizations that are digging into the travel records of their own congressional delegations.<\/p>\n

“Join Congress, See the World,” stated a front-page report in the Chicago Tribune. “There’s no locale too exotic or destination too far for Illinois’ delegation to visit in service of its constituents.” The Times-Picayune of New Orleans cracked on its front page, “State’s politicos like to travel — And they like other people to pay for it.” The front page of the May 29 Hartford Courant trumpeted, “Public Trips, Private Funding — State Delegation Frequent Travelers.”<\/p>\n

Rick Davis, a Republican strategist who was presidential campaign manager for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), said the ethics issue is putting the party “into a bit of troublesome water.”<\/p>\n

“The combination of gridlock and ethics charges indicate that the system’s busted, and the system is the majority party,” Davis said. “The contest for us in the bi-election is to explain what we’ve gotten accomplished in the last two years, and right now, it’s not looking so hot. The focus is on the problems, because there isn’t that much happening. We need some successes.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Except successes are getting harder to come by because the party isn’t on the same page. Congress can “successfully” move forward on funding stem-cell research, but the White House is opposed. Bush has put Social Security privatization on the front burner — which is where most lawmakers wish it weren’t. They can’t agree on an energy bill, or a highway bill, or even which bills should get the highest priority.<\/p>\n

And all the while, lawmakers’ ethics problems are becoming the signature feature of the 109th Congress.
\n
\nHouse Administration Committee Chairman Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio), for example, is up to his ears<\/a> in the Jack Abramoff fiasco, and the political fall-out is catching up with him.<\/p>\n

Ney is known as “the mayor of Capitol Hill,” where his committee controls perks that include BlackBerrys, modular furniture and parking spaces. He is a conservative who has thrived in a blue-collar Democratic district, through gestures such as personally giving tours of the Capitol to 5,000 constituents’ children each spring. With his warm relations with other lawmakers in both parties and his mastery of the nooks and crannies of the institution, he has been considered a strong contender to move up the House leadership ladder.<\/p>\n

Now, all of that is in jeopardy. Ney, 51, has hired a criminal lawyer and is preparing for a grueling inquiry by the House ethics committee. His name also appears frequently in e-mails being studied by investigators at the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, which is looking into lobbyists’ dealings with gambling-enriched tribes. […]<\/p>\n

In the strip malls and along the Cumberland Road where Model T’s once caravanned west, Ney’s constituents said that they have been shocked by the revelations and that they are starting to wonder whether he is really who they thought he was. Joseph E. Wagner, 60, a Republican and owner of a sports club, has always voted for Ney and recently shook the congressman’s hand at a National Rifle Association banquet. But now he is disappointed.<\/p>\n

“I’m beginning to think they just ought to bomb every politician out there,” Wagner said over a scrambled-egg breakfast at the TeeJay’s diner in Zanesville, in the Ohio Valley west of Pittsburgh. “He’s just gotten completely out of control. He just got involved with the wrong people.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s a perception that the news about these scandals is interesting in DC, but no where else. This story suggests, however, that voters are hearing about the ethical and legal transgressions — and they’re not happy with what they’ve learned.<\/p>\n

Granted, the midterm elections are still very<\/i> far off, but these events are laying the groundwork for some significant changes in 2006. It also suggests this “ethics crisis” is an issue Dems must continue to emphasize for the indefinite future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Washington Post’s Mike Allen had a terrific item today about a phenomenon Republican strategists are calling “the DeLay effect” — the way in which questions surrounding Tom DeLay are starting to hurt his House GOP colleagues. This is exactly how the Dems hoped to capitalize on The Hammer’s scandals. It’s not just about one […]<\/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-4378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4378","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=4378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4378\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}