Kicking the Hammer to the Curb

I said way back in April that it was time for the House GOP to find themselves a new majority leader. Tom DeLay is an albatross around the neck of every Republican candidate in the country, and people are coming to see him as just another example of GOP greed, corruption, and power-madness (those, that is, who didn't see him that way already). The Republicans in the House have done in just over a decade what it took the Democrats forty years to do - become infinitely more interested in keeping their grasp on power than on doing what they promise to do when they ask people to vote for them.

DeLay is a powerful symbol of the cancer within today's Republican party, the rottenness that has taken control of a once Grand Old Party and turned it into little more (and there are, of course, exceptions) than a collection of sycophants and automatons, robotically attending fundraisers and voting the party line.

This Republican's not going to defend Tom DeLay. I'm not going to say he's been a "great majority leader" or a "good ally" or anything else. He's a liability to our party, and he ought to resign permanently as Majority Leader. If he does not, if he returns to his post under any circumstances, our entire caucus will be painted with the same slimy brush of ethical stink - and frankly I don't want that to be my GOP.

House Republicans have a choice here - they can turn their backs on the greed, corruption, and power madness of the last decade and offer a renewed vision for America, or they can continue to grasp madly at the last straws of their faded "ideals" and just await the rout that will someday come (possibly sooner rather than later).

I know not what course others may take, but as for me, I'll stand for change.