Republican Stupidity

More good news for the Republican party:

Tom DeLay deliberately raised more money than he needed to throw parties at the 2000 presidential convention, then diverted some of the excess to longtime ally Roy Blunt through a series of donations that benefited both men’s causes.

When the financial carousel stopped, DeLay’s private charity, the consulting firm that employed DeLay’s wife and the Missouri campaign of Blunt’s son all ended up with money, according to campaign documents reviewed by The Associated Press.

Jack Abramoff, a Washington lobbyist recently charged in an ongoing federal corruption and fraud investigation, and Jim Ellis, the DeLay fundraiser indicted with his boss last week in Texas, also came into the picture.

The complicated transactions are drawing scrutiny in legal and political circles after a grand jury indicted DeLay on charges of violating Texas law with a scheme to launder illegal corporate donations to state candidates.

Blunt last week temporarily replaced DeLay as House majority leader, and Blunt’s son, Matt, has now risen to Missouri’s governor.

Fuck ’em all. If this is true and illegal, a purge is long overdue. This also flies in the face of what some people were saying about Delay and his wife several months ago:

Mrs. DeLay makes about $48,250 a year, while Mrs. Ferro earns closer to $40,000. At that rate over four years, the two of them put together would have made around $350,000. The remainder of the half-million comes from Mrs. Ferro’s consulting firm which works on DeLay’s election campaigns; it received $221,000 over four years (two election cycles), or about $55,000 a year…

Don’t get me wrong. I think the practice itself is a problem, one that we should pressure our representatives to end. It can lead to back-door corruption far too easily. However, for the Times and the Left to jump all over DeLay as unethical and singular in this practice is dishonest, ignorant, and transparently partisan.

As I said in April, “If this were the only strike Tom DeLay had against him, I would tend to agree with the Captain- this would be a transparently partsan swipe at DeLay. But, if this was baseball, and Tom DeLay were a batter, he would be working on his ninth strike.”

I really am sick of these people. I am sick of the misplaced priorities, I am sick of the me-first attitudes, I am sick of the ethical transgressions and the attitude that it is ok to cross the line, I am sick of what they have done to the Republican party, and I am just sick of it all.

A Few Bad Apples or a Rotten Barrel?Post + Comments (89)

Matt Stinson builds the case against the fiscal conservatives in Congress.

Don’t Miss This, EitherPost + Comments (13)

John Fund sticks the knife in and twists:

With Rep. Tom DeLay’s forced departure as majority leader, Newt Gingrich says, the Republican Party stands at a crossroads as important as any it has faced since nominating Ronald Reagan for president in 1980. “It must decide if it is going to be a party that fundamentally reforms government or one that merely presides over existing institutions and spends more money,” he says. Which path the GOP now takes may determine not only how much damage it suffers in next year’s elections but also whether it can hold the White House in 2008…

The loudest warning was sounded in November, 2003. At the behest of the White House, Mr. Hastert and then-Majority Leader DeLay held a floor vote open for three hours early one morning while they browbeat GOP members to pass a prescription drug benefit that was the largest expansion of an entitlement program since LBJ’s Great Society. “It was a watershed event, the moment when Republicans who stood for limited government realized they were the enemy of their own leadership,” Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma told me.

Since then the GOP’s love affair with big government has intensified. This summer Congress passed a $286 billion highway bill stuffed with 6,373 pork-barrel projects inserted by individual members, many so marginal they have drawn national ridicule. All this was abetted or even led by a Bush White House that has yet to veto a single bill and whose officials have apparently adapted the old New Deal slogan “tax and tax, and spend and spend, and elect and elect” into merely “spend and spend.”

The truth hurts.

And Then You Have ThisPost + Comments (48)

And the administration hit parade continues on:

Federal auditors said on Friday that the Bush administration violated the law by buying favorable news coverage of President Bush’s education policies, by making payments to the conservative commentator Armstrong Williams and by hiring a public relations company to analyze media perceptions of the Republican Party.

In a blistering report, the investigators, from the Government Accountability Office, said the administration had disseminated “covert propaganda” in the United States, in violation of a statutory ban.

The contract with Mr. Williams and the general contours of the public relations campaign had been known for months. The report Friday provided the first definitive ruling on the legality of the activities.

Lawyers from the accountability office, an independent nonpartisan arm of Congress, found that the administration systematically analyzed news articles to see if they carried the message, “The Bush administration/the G.O.P. is committed to education.”

The auditors declared: “We see no use for such information except for partisan political purposes. Engaging in a purely political activity such as this is not a proper use of appropriated funds.”

Again, my main reaction is I simply can;t believe they thought this was a good idea. I can’t believe Armstrong took the money, which is degrees less serious than offering it in the first place, but the whole thing just leaves me aghast. It was just stupid, illegal, and well, stupid.

Not to mention Armstrong Williams was already a supporter of vouchers and the Bush education policy. Why pay him at all?

Breaking The LawPost + Comments (74)

Now what this guy said is idiotic:

ERWIN: Well, I think, if you look at what‘s going on, this whole region has always known that, with the church, that New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are known for sin.

And if you go to a church and you read your Bible, you are always told avoid sin and that there‘s judgment for sin. And I just think that, in my analysis—and I can‘t speak for everybody, but I believe that, if you look at the factors, that you had a city that was known for sin—the signature of New Orleans is the French Quarter, Bourbon Street. It is known for sin. And you have a Bible that says God will judge sin, you can put two and two together and say, it may not be the judgment of God, but it sure looks like the footprint.

So, I just told my friends, in an opinion, I think it could be the judgment of God on the Gulf Coast and on New Orleans. And I would urge the good folks that are the innocent victims to rally and rebuild that city and get a new signature.

Ugh.

Another FoolPost + Comments (23)

Contained within a long WaPo piece on the process to choose DeLay’s successor (which, much to the chagrin of John Aravosis, had little to do with HAIRY MAN COCK and lots to do with the candidate’s conservative credentials) was this nugget that just left me aghast:

Some lawmakers, such as Zach Wamp (Tenn.) challenged Republican leaders to set a date for formal leadership elections instead of allowing party bosses to impose their choices. At the same time, conservatives such as Steve Buyer (Ind.) rose to say Republicans should have allowed DeLay to remain majority leader even with an indictment. Earlier this year, under pressure from Democrats and a few in his own party, Hastert reversed a rule designed expressly for DeLay that would have allowed indicted leaders to retain their positions.

Rep. Tom Feeney (Fla.) said afterward that the rules change “was like waving a red flag to Ronnie Earle,” the Texas prosecutor who pushed for DeLay’s indictment. Feeney said some conservatives may push for still another reversal, allowing DeLay to return even before his legal problems are resolved.

We are officially dealing with crazy people. I don’t care what you think about Ronnie Earle- I have my opinions. I don’t care what you think about the validity of the indictment. I don’t care if you think DeLay will be acquitted.

If you can not figure out why he should step aside from his leadership position, you are a crazy person.

Are They InsanePost + Comments (54)