House Republican Leader Tom DeLay, struggling with an ever-widening circle of allegations of ethical lapses and potentially illegal conduct, has clearly settled on a strategy to make himself bullet-proof: just attack anyone who questions his and the Republican Congress' behavior as instruments of a
vast left-wing conspiracy to "destroy the conservative movement." Today's Washington Post reports DeLay has enlisted a number of conservative groups to echo this dismissive message, which goes as follows (in DeLay's own words): "It's nothing but a bunch of
leftist organizations that have a public strategy to demonize me." Already, some of his allies are circulating talking points that suggest DeLay's ethical problems are just a mirage created by organizations connected to a figure they like to demonize, liberal financier George Soros.
So let's examine some of the leftist conspirators who are concerned about DeLay's behavior, and what it says about the GOP-controlled Congress: ...
For starters, there's us. We have long argued that DeLay's modus operandi, focused on a crude play-for-pay approach to lobbyists interested in legislation, and including the most savagely partisan management of the House since the Gilded Age, is a disgrace...few of our friends or critics would do anything but laugh at the idea that the DLC is some sort of "leftist" front organization.
...that well-known leftist organ, the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, summarized the allegations against DeLay, and concluded: "Whether Mr. DeLay violated the small print of House Ethics or campaign-finance rules is thus largely beside the point. His real fault lies in betraying the broader set of principles that brought him into office, and which, if he continues as before, sooner or later will sweep him out."
... Then there's The Weekly Standard magazine, financed not by Mr. Soros, but by Rupert Murdoch, which has reported heavily and scathingly on the Indian Casino Shakedown scandal in which a close DeLay associate is a key figure, and of which DeLay himself, along with other prominent House GOP members, is alleged to have been a beneficiary.
And only a true conspiracy-theory enthusiast could believe the "leftist" campaign to "demonize" Tom DeLay could extend to College Station, Texas, where the Texas A&M student newspaper, The Battalion, published an opinion column earlier this week calling on Republicans to oppose DeLay's re-election in 2006.
http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=131&subid=192&contentid=253261
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