In the new world of Republican domination, creative thinking and the willingness to look at issues with an open mind are hardly valued characteristics. No, the ONLY thing that matters is complete, unswerving, unquestioning loyalty to the Conservative fiscal ideals of the Party.
WASHINGTON -- From now on, the buck stops with Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, and fellow House leader J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois.
House Majority Leader-elect DeLay and Speaker Hastert will consolidate power in January with new rules designed to enforce discipline among independent-minded GOP subcommittee chairmen who oversee government spending.
Under those rules, seniority will no longer elevate longtime lawmakers to the coveted 13 subcommittee chairmanships of the powerful House Appropriations Committee.
Instead, loyalty to conservative ideals will win those posts -- which are so revered that those who hold them are called the cardinals of the House.
DeLay, who is, to be honest, clearly channeling the late Lee Atwater, would have been perfectly comfortable in the old SS. They valued only one thing- unquestioned obedience, and DeLay brooks no dissent from any quarter. The sad thing is that by insisting that candidates for subcommittee chairmanships toe the party line, DeLay and Hastert have eliminated any possibility of creating a leadership willing to think outside the box.
I've always believed that politics is the art of the possible, and that compromise is part and parcel of making government work. For Republican WingNuts like DeLay, however, politics is a zero-sum, slash-and-burn, you-lose-I-win proposition. Perhaps two years of this madness will convince the electorate that they've made a mistake entrusting the legislative process to these nutcases.
But Democrats see a possible advantage. They think fiscal conservatives will turn the budget screws so tight that projects supported by moderate Republicans will be squeezed out, creating a backlash. Democrats are holding an economic summit next week to devise a strategy for taking on GOP conservatives.
"You've got the lunatic wing of the Republican Party willing to simultaneously cut taxes for the wealthy and ramp down spending for homeland security and other domestic programs," said David Sirota, Democratic spokesman for the House Appropriations Committee.
Democrats say the Republican Study Committee, a DeLay brainchild that includes lawmakers he helped elect, exists solely to boost the GOP leadership.
"Theirs is a religion," Sirota said of the study committee. "But the Appropriations Committee has tried to be much more bipartisan, much more pragmatic, because you have to get things done to make the government work."
Of course, there is also the possibility that two years of this madness will not be enough to convince the majority of the electorate what they have done to themselves. In the end, we really DO get exactly the quality of representation that we deserve....
For Tom DeLay, politics is about power- period. It's not about trying to make government work, or to make our country a better place. It's about being in control and pulling the levers of power. It's just too bad that his constituents are too blind to see that reality.
