The Contract Killers (Contract w/America was 11 yo last week)

[WhiteTara]

Matthew Continetti,a staff writer at The Weekly Standard, is writing a book about the Republican Party.

snip
At this, Washingtonians with long memories were barely able to suppress their grins. If Mr. DeLay and his supporters grasped the irony of the occasion, they gave no clue. Eleven years ago this past week, Republican congressmen and candidates unveiled their "Contract With America." Their proposals came just in time for the 1994 midterm elections, which brought the Republicans to power after a 40-year stint in the minority. Back then, Mr. DeLay and other Republicans promised "a new order." They pledged to drain the swamp that was Washington. Just over a decade later, they find themselves up to their necks in the muck.
Led by Mr. DeLay in the House, Rick Santorum in the Senate and Grover Norquist downtown, Republicans worked not just toward the partisan realignment of the country, but of the influence industry, too. They tracked which lobbyists were Democrats and which Republicans, refused to meet with the Democrats and pressured business groups and law firms to hire the conservatives. Their strenuous efforts to blur the boundaries between corporate America and the Republican Party came to be known as the K Street Project.
snip
It's quite a fall, no doubt about it: from agile insurgency to bloated establishment in just over a decade. So what went wrong? The 1994 Republicans understood that power in Washington was not simply a matter of who controlled the White House and Congress. Passing legislation also required the support of powerful unelected business interests and their representatives on K Street, the historic home of the lobbying trade.
snip
Things weren't meant to be this way. The K Street Project was a means to an end. The means was harnessing the political energies of the private sector and its agents. The end was a lasting Republican majority that would limit government and increase individual freedom and responsibility. But, as tends to happen, the means became an end in itself.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/01/opinion/01continetti.html