Former House Majority Leader Tom Delay of Texas has formed a new web-based organization that he claims will show the way for Republicans to regain power in the nation’s capitol. Says Delay: “The Democrats didn t win this election, Republicans lost it, and the most important lesson we can take from our defeat is that conservatives must act on our first principles,” DeLay said in a news release announcing the new organization, which is to be known as “Grassroots, Action and Information Network,” or GAIN. “We must organize and act to protect the very principles of order, justice, and freedom that are the touchstones of our nation s founding, and that s what the blog and GAIN will work to accomplish,” he said. Conservatives and libertarians are likely not cheering. Let’s go to the tape, as Warner Wolf used to say, to see why. First, Delay’s recently jailed lobbyist buddy, Jack Abramoff, referred to Congress as the “favor factory” because it was so easy to get Members of Congress to do things like insert special interest earmarks in legislation. Before the Republican majority was elected in 1994, earmarks were comparatively scarce. In the past decade, with Delay in leadership positions throughout the period, the number of earmarks has exploded, exceeding 15,000 last year. Earmarks are anonymous, unaccountable and unreviewable, and thus serve as a perfect symbol of the culture of corruption that revolts so many voters in both major political parties. Delay was an enthusiastic advocate of Republicans using earmarks to gain re-election. Second, Delay’s nickname was “The Hammer” because of his, shall we say, forceful pressuring of GOP colleagues for their votes. The most blatant illustration of Delay’s tactics came in the 2003 House vote on President Bush’s proposed Medicare drug benefit. Delay, with Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert’s blessing, kept the voting open for hours while recalcitrant GOPers were dragooned, threatened, promised and otherwise induced to vote for a measure most opposed because it represented a massive expansion of the welfare state. In the end, Delay won passage but only after a disreputable arm-twisting assault on the GOP’s long-standing opposition to expanding government welfare and entitlement programs. Third, to hear Delay talk during his days in power, the GOP was doing everything possible to cut government spending, eliminate waste and fraud and restore constitutional limits on the exercise of central power. In fact, during the period in which Delay was the second most powerful GOP leader in the House, federal spending exploded at a much faster rate than it had under President Clinton. The power of the federal bureaucracy was vastly expanded with legislation like the No Child Left Behind Act that has sent federal education spending spiralling upwards. The power of the federal regulatory colossus continued to expand throughout the time in which Delay was a GOP House leader. For those and numerous similar reasons, many conservatives and libertarians view the period during which Delay was in power as disastrous for Americans who want to restore limited, constitutional government. So now Delay wants to lead the GOP back to power by focusing on the basic principles of the founding? Limited government advocates are likely to point to how he helped inflict serious damage to those principles when he was in power and then look elsewhere for leadership. Tom Delay Congress Politics Republicans Democrats
