Jim Wright resigned..what is your problem Bug Boy?

[Dees]

The Meaning of Strife

Political scandals choose from a relative handful of scripts, I suppose -- just as Joseph Campbell once theorized that all human myths spring from a relative handful of archetypes. That being the case, it's probably not surprising that the decline and fall of Jim Wright and Tony Coelho foreshadowed the decline and possible fall of the Bug Man.

There are differences, of course. Wright and Coelho divided the basic tasks of power -- with Wright pulling the legislative strings and Coelho acting as the bag man. DeLay combines both functions.

The Bug Man has also managed to do things that Wright and Coelho at the height of their power never tried to do, at least to my knowledge: Like forcing a partisan affirmative action plan on K Street, complete with goals and timetables, or packing the ethics committee with his closest cronies, then changing the rules to essentially neuter the panel.

But the Democrats, even at their worst, had at least some lingering sense of shame. The modern GOP machine, as far as I can tell, has absolutely none -- which probably explains why the Republican majority has been able in a decade to sink to levels of corruption it took the Democratic majority almost three generations to reach.

The stories may also end differently -- probably will end differently, since I have a hard time seeing the Bug Man slinking off into retirement like Jim Wright. As Barney Frank has already noted, the Republican Caucus has a hell of a lot more invested in Tom DeLay -- emotionally, politically and not least financially -- than the Democrats of the '80s ever had invested in Jim Wright. So you'd have to say the odds are that this scandal is going to get much, much uglier before it's over, and leave the House even more of a smoking partisan crater than its '80s predecessor did.

Which I would never have thought possible at the time.

from billmon.org
Posted by billmon at April 11, 2005 12:30 PM

[ClassWarrior]

1. We'll give you a head start, Bugman... Only because Progressives are fair.

Resign now before we frog march you to the federal pen in leg irons.

NGU.

[lonestarnot]

2. Can you say Super Volcano? LOL

[realFedUp]

3. a cheap way of getting rid of roaches

isn't bombing them with heavy duty chems.,
it's sprinkling cheap (from the drugstore)
powdered boric acid along the baseboards
(I know, I lived in NYC). They ingest it coz they're
clean little buggers, take it back to their
nests and dry up.

Sometimes ya just have to let the
little buggers dry up on their own.