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Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Lest my silence be mistaken, as has happened to bigger fish, I really don't give a rat's patootie one way or the other about DeLay. As the mighty Instapundit notes, he was sort of a backroom guy. When that meant assembling a ruling coalition for Gingrich, that was good. For Hastert, less so. It's the folks setting the tone that mattered, and the problem with the GOP today is not that DeLay was corrupt - or not - but that the larger party has fallen into a "holding down the fort" mentality where it doesn't want to devolve power or cut spending since that would mean reducing its own power and of the purse.
The downfall of Newt Gingrich was a tragedy because it slowed an ideological movement with the potential to bring real change. Which is why his critics fought so hard to destroy him. The downfall of DeLay, though, is a matter of personal bad judgment wed to partisan score-keeping. What it means is that Denny Hastert will have to work harder to hold together a lackluster coalition at a time when the real idea people are in the Executive and Congress feels a bit bitter about it. But in the war of ideas, the consequence will be relatively small, much more like the downfall of Trent Lott and the drifting off of Bob Dole.
posted by gbarto at 12:10 PM
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