Troubled Waters
War, storms, leak probes—and a growing array of ETHICS CLOUDS. Dark days for the Republican Party.By Howard Fineman and Eleanor Clift
Newsweek
Oct. 10, 2005 issue - In the Tom DeLay era—now at least temporarily ended—a meeting of the House Republican Conference usually was a ceremonial affair, at which "Leadership" (always a single word, spoken with a mixture of awe and fear) clued in the flock on Done Deals. The proceedings had the spontaneity of a Baath Party conclave. But last week the erstwhile majority leader, and the rest of the Leadership he had forged since taking effective control of the House in the late '90s, was struggling to maintain its grip. The members applauded him as he proclaimed his innocence of the charge leveled against him: that he had funneled streams of laundered corporate cash into legislative races in Texas. They cheered as he attacked the Democratic prosecutor in Austin. And they didn't argue when he denounced the conference itself for having written a rule that barred him from continuing to serve as majority leader, even under indictment. Speaker Denny Hastert, ever the avuncular wrestling coach, gave a pep talk on the virtues of unity in adversity.
Facing a firestorm, DeLay pronounced his innocenceStill, when it came time to discuss precisely what would happen next, discipline broke down. DeLay and Hastert had wanted Rep. David Dreier to step in as acting majority leader. Instead, the hard-charging Roy Blunt got the job. Members demanded full-scale elections sooner rather than later for a new permanent Leadership, and if DeLay doesn't escape his legal problem by January—hardly a certainty—that vote will occur and he won't be in the race. Reaching for inspiration, one acolyte compared the Speaker to Robert E. Lee and DeLay to Stonewall Jackson: when the latter was wounded, the former still won a crucial battle. But another member elicited wry laughter by pointing out that Jackson had been shot, accidentally, by his own troops.
Some backbenchers were gloomy and resentful, but unwilling to say so on the record, for fear that the vindictive DeLay might survive. "Leadership has become ossified and hopelessly out of touch," lamented one such member. "They only care about one thing, hanging onto their own power. I'm not ready to take them on, at least not yet, not unless I have to!"-snip-
Bush and his fellow Republicans have little margin for error.
Three forces—sky-high gasoline prices, the massive costs of rebuilding the Gulf Coast and ever-gloomier public assessments of the war in Iraq—have combined to weaken Bush's reputation as a strong leader, and leave him vulnerable to the kind of second-term fiascoes that tend to befall all presidents: think Ronald Reagan and Iran-contra, or Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.
Indeed, polltaker Frank Luntz, who helped develop the "Contract With America" message that swept Republicans to power in 1994, was on the Hill last week warning the party faithful that they could lose both the House and the Senate in next year's congressional elections.-snip-
In politics, timing is everything, and GOP officials worried that the many Abramoff investigations—not to mention a DeLay trial in Texas, if it comes to that—could take place next summer, just before the midterm elections. In the meantime, Leadership wrestled with their own characteristically crucial issues. Such as:
who occupies the Majority Leader Suite in the Capitol? DeLay has moved out, but most of his official staff have remained. Blunt will not move in, officially, keeping his whip office as home base. Instead, Blunt, Dreier and Deputy Whip Eric Cantor will hover in the vicinity.
So the office will remain officially vacant. It's symbolic evidence of Leadership—or the absence of it.http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9558564/site/newsweek/ 
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