GOP Congressmen and Senators reflect on twelve years of Congressional leadership in tomorrow’s Washington Post. Newt Gingrich sets the tone:
“It’s a mixed bag,” said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), the architect of the 1994 revolution. “In a three-year period, we changed things fairly dramatically. We, candidly, then failed.”
A sad coda for the worst Congress ever and a poignant warning for the incoming Democratic majority.
scarshapedstar
To be fair, at least the incoming Democratic majority hasn’t promised to change anything. No sir, it’s all “we come in peace.” No followup on the Mark Foley whitewash. Not a damn thing’s going to come out of the war profiteering investigations run by Joe Fucking Lieberman (!??!?!). And since Darth Nancy has deigned impeachment to be uncivil, there’s nothing to actually back up the vaunted Congressional subpoena powers, since they’re enforced by Abu Gonzales.
demimondian
Absolutely, scar.
After all, the Republicans did so well coming into office with the plan of impeaching Clinton, didn’t they? They extended their lead in both the House and the Senate, gaining seats in both bodies. Yes, indeedy, they did.
And the follow-up on the Foley investigations…yessir, we will gain a whole lot from that. It makes so much more sense to continue beating that dead horse than it would to, say, work on repairing the problems in the program. After all, it’s all about the politics of beating up on the Republicans, not at all about protecting the pages. Right?
And Lieberman is the only head of an investigative committee on the hill, isn’t he? I mean, there’s nobody in the House who could investigate war profiteering. Not David Obey, no, no, not at all.
Pb
scarshapedstar,
Actually, I think they have. Now we’ll see if they make good on their promises.
Whether or not anything might have been (or indeed could have been) promised there aside, you know this because… (hint: that was the 109th Congress–the 110th Congress hasn’t started yet…)
Now that I might believe.
If they start refusing subpoenas, I’d imagine that impeachment will suddenly be on the table just because of that. If not, well, then we effectively don’t have a co-equal legislative branch of government period, and that will just make it official.
The Liberal Avenger
Definitely read the Rolling Stone story if you have a chance. It’s visceral. The author’s ranting about Duke Cunningham towards the end is hilarious.
TenguPhule
Fixed.
pie
It’s depressing the shit out of me, though. But I guess it answers an important question for historians curious as to how it felt to go from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire- it probably felt something like this. Anyone who ever wants to vote Republican again during the course of their lifetime should read that article first and ponder the ramifications of that decision.
ChrisO
Fixed.
I reckon Niall Ferguson had the right idea when he said (in his book Colossus) that the American Republic would suffer the same fate as the Roman Republic – destroyed not so much by barbarians at the gate, but by corrupt and divisive politicians who cared more for their own positions than for the future of the state.
DougJ
Because both sides are bad.
Et tu, Tim?
Punchy
Knew-it Gingrich’s unctuous and insipid diatribe is downright Pecksniffian.
ThymeZone
Like “Jesus H. Christ,” this is a great colloquialism.
I think Joe should call his website “Senator Joe Fucking Lieberman.”
Punchy
I think it’s only a matter of time before that gets amended to “Joe Fucking Democrats”…
Tim F.
I’m surprised that you are the only one who has jumped at that point so far.
It seems self-evident to point out that Democrats could head off future problems by observing what went wrong with the Republicans. The problem with the GOP isn’t (primarily) that the party is inherently corrupt. Their downfall was that they never believed in transparency and oversight, at least not for themselves. History’s lesson here is that if the Dems don’t step up with meaningful self-policing then individual Dems will feel free to let their id be their guide, and the party will rot like the GOP did. That isn’t to say that they will ever reach the debased standards of this 109th Congress, but I have standards a hell of a lot higher than that.
The Other Steve
I just hope the Democrats don’t see this election as some sort of mandate. That people were demanding change.
They weren’t demanding change. They just didn’t like the Republicans personally.
It’s in the best interests of the Democratic party that they pass the Terri Schiavo bill, insuring that government sanctioned murder never occurs again. And that they ban violent video games, to help insure students never shoot other students again. And finish the anihilation of the Islamofascist Threat that is worse than the Nazis and Commies combined.
Only then will the Democrats be taken seriously.
The Other Steve
Oh yeah, and Democrats should ban abortion and teh gays to help win over the evangelical vote and help cement a permanent Democratic majority.
demimondian
Tim…when the Democratic party gets blamed for the election of William Jefferson, despite having sent in every resource possible to defeat him, yet gets told that this shows that this shows “the corruption is a bipartisan problem”, when any actions to get rid of corruption problems are automatically credited to the Republicans, why should I take anyone seriously who echoes that line?
The truth here is that Newt Gingrich, Tom Delay, and the like were evil men in their lives before they came to Congress. Congress didn’t change them at all. They were self-centered thugs without a conscience before they came, and they stayed that way throughout. The WP article is nothing more than their own attempt to shift the blame for their own crimes to other people — and you bought it reflexively.
Et tu, Tim?
Newport 9
Tim F. observes:
Sure it is. The Republicans believe that government doesn’t work, and every time they gain power they set out to prove it.
Tim F.
Demi, I don’t think that I am saying anything controversial here. The GOP allowed scumbags like Gingrich and DeLay to rise to power specifically because it lacked the internal oversight and self-policing to keep them in check. It is too easy to dismiss the entire party as loathsome, evil, whatever.
This is exactly the argument that I make with rightwingers who want to dismiss our hated enemy du jour as evil and, more to the point, Alien. They’re not. Groups of people are all made up of the same raw material. They become rotten and governed by id because of incentive/reward structures that each group creates. DeLay and company are a consequence of the incentive system in which they operated. If transparency existed in the GOP then DeLay, Abramoff and Gingrich would still be just as evil but their influence would have been nil.
That is the point I want to make – any group is as good as the incentive/reward system that it imposes on itself. I don’t think that there is anything wrong with the Democrats yet, and I don’t think there ever will be if they take the lessons of the last 12 years fully to heart.
DougJ
The Democrats successfully ran the House for 40 years. They won’t be looking at what the Republicans did to fuck up, they’ll be looking at what they themselves did correctly — yes, I know about the House banking scandal, etc. but you expect a scandal in 40 years. There was a very perceptive piece by former Republican Congressman Bob Barr about this — his take was the Republicans who ran the House were morons and the Democrats who have taken over are not. He seemed to know what he was talking about (he provided a wealth of detail about exactly what he meant).
demimondian
Hmm. Tim, I disagree — not because the left is any more moral or upright than the right, cuz it aint, (just say “The Teamsters” and you’ve said it all), but because I’m saying that the “Republican Revolution of 1994” was led, from the start, by a bunch of people that even the punditocracy knew to be crooks from the get-go.
If the punditocrats take the lessons of the last twelve years to heart, then they will be rigorous about putting the Dems on the spot, and this particular failure won’t happen. When it’s our turn, it’ll be something different.
John Cole
I am not sure how anyone could read this piece and think that Tim was talking moral equivalency.
But, alas, it appears many of you have.
srv
FYI, something y’all may want to keep an eye on:
Tom Delay Blog
demimondian
I don’t know how I can read the suggestion that a self-serving and fundamentally dishonest piece about the failings of the Republican party along with a comment that it’s a “poignant suggestion” and not read “they both do it”.
C’mon, John. We all know that the Dems will eventually fall to a set of scandals. But, frankly, they won’t be these scandals; this kind of combination of abuse of governmental power against individuals and distribution of governmental largesse seems to be a uniquely Republican achievement over the last century (Teapot dome being the other major example.)
DougJ
No, I just think it’s stupid to think that Democrats will behave anything like the Republicans have.
TenguPhule
John, my only quibble with Tim’s post is the title and his choice of quote. The Republicans in Power were not changed by Washington, they went in dirty, mucked the place up even more and left it worse off then they found it.
Let it serve as a warning to the Democrats, fine. But let’s not kid ourselves that the Gutless Old Pussies were not rotten to begin with.
pie
What’s really interesting is that the Romans invited in half the barbarians, and the other half came charging in looking for military commissions and land titles. Just about the only barbarian king prior to the mid-fifth century who really thought he had a shot at taking the Empire down was Attila, and the Empire outlasted him by over 20 years.
America’s not quite at the Empire stage yet. The democratic institutions are tottering under the weight of greed and indifference, but the true expansionism hasn’t commenced yet. I notice Canada and Mexico are still sovereign nations, and those should be the first to go once we go full-on Imperial.