A Victory!

It may be a minor victory, but we'll take whatever we can get. After a meeting of the House Republican caucus this morning, Speaker Hastert announced that he would call for a vote on a rollback of the ethics rules pushed through in January sometime this evening or tomorrow. The moment arrived this evening, and, as the AP is reporting, "Republicans backed the resolution grudgingly."

The debate, AP says, was "bitterly partisan," with Republicans complaining that Democrats were holding up organization of the Ethics Committee and Democrats charging that the Republicans had changed the rules to protect DeLay from investigation. But when the vote was called, most Republicans followed Hastert's lead and voted to reinstate the bipartisan ethics panel - the final result was 406-20 (all twenty no votes came from conservative Republicans). Said Chris Shays, an outspoken critic of the January rules changes and the only Republican House member who has called for DeLay to resign as Majority Leader: "I think it was a mistake to amend the rules, and I'm grateful we will restore them to the way they were."

It's unfortunate that the leaders of my party had to be dragged kicking and whining to this eventuality through intense Democratic criticism and newspaper editorials, but I'm glad it happened just the same. I agree with Nancy Pelosi, who said tonight that the rollback is "a victory for the American people. Americans understood what was at stake - the integrity of the House - and in one voice demanded that the House return to a credible, viable and nonpartisan ethics process."