Sunday, March 27, 2005

DeLay Quietly Steps Out of the Schiavo Spotlight

DeLay Quietly Steps Out of the Schiavo Spotlight

... but a little too late:

While the Schiavo case may have energized his conservative supporters, Democrats and some independent analysts say, it may also have thrust him into the national consciousness at the very moment his opponents are trying to make him a symbol of Republican excess and force another ethics investigation.

Some Democrats have begun drawing parallels between Mr. DeLay and another Republican who eventually became a weight on his party, former Speaker Newt Gingrich.

"The public is beginning to sense a whiff of extremism in the Republican leadership in the House and the Senate," said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. "If it continues, it could prove very detrimental to them and good for us."


The most effective run we ever had agains our phony moderate Jim Leach was in 1996, when we were able to say "a vote for Leach is a vote for Gingrich." We had symbolic shorthand for the issue of House control.

True to form, of course, Leach went back in January 1997 and cast a meaningless symbolic vote against Gingrich for speaker thus taking away our shorthand. But DeLay may blow up big enough to become a household word ouside the inside-baseball crowd. My biggest worry is that the ethics stuff will blow up BEFORE November 2006!

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