Contract with America -- The Sequel

The indictment of Tom DeLay, along with other recent GOP embarassments, provides an obvious political opportunity for the Democrats, who lost the House in 1994 under a barrage of ethics charges and effective reform posturing orchestrated by Newt Gingrich.

From The New Republic:

Throughout his Washington career, there is little wrong that DeLay hasn't done. He has transformed the House Republican majority into an arm of corporate special interests that benefit from an unprecedented "pay to play" culture of rewards for political donations. As symbolized by his well-known chumminess with the oleaginous Jack Abramoff, he has unapologetically blurred the lines between officeholders and lobbyists, deeply integrating K Street into his party's political and legislative strategy and treating it like a House Republican patronage machine. And DeLay, more than anyone, has been responsible for running the House of Representatives like a one-party dictatorship, both shutting out the Democratic minority (even denying them simple meeting space) and militantly smothering intraparty dissent.

Those are just the overarching themes of DeLay's disgraceful tenure in Congress. One could type for hours without exhausting the list of particular offenses for which he should have been ostracized by now: He has allegedly threatened K Street firms that failed to hire Republican lobbyists in sufficient numbers. He was admonished last year by the House ethics committee for essentially selling access to energy-industry executives just as Congress was wrapping up a major energy bill. The ethics committee also slapped DeLay for offering to endorse the candidate son of Republican Representative Nick Smith in exchange for Smith's vote in favor of a GOP Medicare bill. Then the ethics committee rebuked him a third time for his wildly inappropriate enlistment of the Federal Aviation Administration to hunt for a group of awol Texas legislators back in 2003.

All this sleaze should spell an opportunity for the Democrats to run the Gingrich game plan in reverse. But it also poses an opportunity for the GOP itself. The DeLay affair might shake the Bugman's claim to the loyalty of K Street and of his cowed and compromised caucus, and permit the few reformers within the party to press for the sweeping change that is so clearly needed.

The problem for the GOP is that DeLay is just one instance (albeit a very major one) of the corruption that has grown along with the right-wing corporate-funded Republican revolution.

This from today's NY Times:

Joe Gaylord, a longtime Republican consultant and an adviser to Newt Gingrich when he was House speaker, said, "When you couple Iraq, Katrina, DeLay in the House, Frist in the Senate," and other ethical flaps, "it looks like 10 years is a long time for a party to be in power."

[..]

"We know that second terms have historically been marred by hubris and by scandal," said David R. Gergen, a former aide to presidents in both parties who is now director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

"We've seen the hubris," Mr. Gergen added, alluding to Mr. Bush's effort to restructure Social Security, now stalled. "And now we're seeing the scandals."

The President and the GOP leadership generally seem to be keeping some distance from DeLay as he squirms and retreats. The real test will be whether the party will reclaim some of the reform spirit that motivated them in 1994. Their other motive, at least as prominent in that year of change, was the yearning for power. If they want to keep that power now, they will have to move quickly to restore public confidence.

That may prove difficult -- especially if more light is brought to bear on the widespread sleaze of the GOP, in the weeks and months ahead.

I'm betting they cannot do it -- and looking to the Democrats to bring the broom in 2006.

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