{"id":5696,"date":"2005-10-31T12:55:20","date_gmt":"2005-10-31T17:55:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5696"},"modified":"2005-10-31T12:55:20","modified_gmt":"2005-10-31T17:55:20","slug":"it-can-get-worse-before-it-gets-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/it-can-get-worse-before-it-gets-better\/","title":{"rendered":"It can get worse before it gets better"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let’s not forget that, as bad as October has been for Republicans, it’s not likely to get much better anytime soon. Roll Call reports<\/a> today that the party’s “headaches are set to multiply.”<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) will be back in court in Austin, Texas, to contest felony money laundering and conspiracy charges stemming from his role in the Lone Star State’s 2002 legislative races. DeLay’s indictment on those charges forced him to step down as Majority Leader in early October. DeLay has denied the charges and vowed to return to his leadership post. <\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) will hold his fourth and final hearing on former GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his business dealings with a half-dozen American Indian tribes. McCain and his staff will then begin work on a committee report, expected to be released later this year, outlining the findings of their 18-month probe, according to Senate sources. <\/p>\n

In addition, the long-sidelined House ethics committee is expected to be back in full operation soon. Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) and Alan Mollohan (D-W.Va.), chairman and ranking member of the panel, are conducting a search for a new chief counsel for the committee, and the two are said to be close to making a selection. Once the committee is up and running, it will begin preliminary probes of DeLay, House Administration Chairman Bob Ney (R-Ohio) and other Members caught up in the Abramoff and travel scandals. <\/p>\n

Finally, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan over his sales of stock in his family’s hospital chain.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And that’s just on the Hill; it doesn’t even include Scooter Libby’s indictment or Karl Rove continuing to be the subject of a criminal investigation.<\/p>\n

But in terms of the one that’s really bothering the GOP, it’s Abramoff. Uber-activist Paul Weyrich told<\/a> the LA Times over the weekend, “I’ve been talking to some members who are scared to death” by the Abramoff affair. “That one has the potential for blowing into something far larger.”<\/p>\n

It can’t be easy to be a Republican nowadays. There’s so many scandals and so few defenses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let’s not forget that, as bad as October has been for Republicans, it’s not likely to get much better anytime soon. Roll Call reports today that the party’s “headaches are set to multiply.” On Tuesday, Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) will be back in court in Austin, Texas, to contest felony money laundering and conspiracy charges […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5696","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=5696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5696\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}