Friendly Fire ...
Via OpinionJournal's Political Diary ...
House GOPers truly earned the opprobrium that's now being rained upon their heads after yesterday's vote revoking a rule that would have defrocked House Majority Leader Tom Delay if he were to be indicted in the Texas redistricting controversy. That is, they earned the opprobrium not because they changed the rule, but because they enacted it the first place.Imposed on themselves when Republicans were in the minority and Democrats were wallowing in the scandals in the early 1990s, the rule was a grandstanding play to highlight the undoubted arrogance and corruption of the entrenched Dem majority. Who could forget Jim Wright's scandal when his union cronies were found to be ordering huge numbers of his throwaway book to line the house speaker's pocket? Or Democratic looting of the House Post Office and abuse of overdraft privileges at the House bank? But the GOP response was the sort of dumb symbolic gesture that politicians like to make because usually the consequences are borne by somebody else (see Sarbanes-Oxley).
Of course, it was unwise to put a bull's-eye on their own leaders for any partisan prosecutor in the country who cared to make a name for himself. But GOPers did it to themselves, and it's rewarding to see their grandstanding get its belated comeuppance. Moderate Connecticut GOPer Chris Shays complained that yesterday's rule change showed that Republicans were becoming arrogant and unaccountable themselves -- he's right but better proof is the exploding federal budget.
--Holman W. Jenkins Jr.
Kudos on consistency. Personally, I thought it very telling that on the same day we saw the Senate revert to a mostly grand tradition of rewarding seniority by allowing Arlen Specter to take the helm at Judiciary, the House reverted to its most common attribute of self-serving boss rule by changing the rules to protect their money bag ... er, I mean Tom DeLay.
The lesson here for our side is that the next generation of leadership will rightfully eminate from that party which proves it can govern as grown ups. Reform those elements of political discourse that tend towards such machine political rule (redistricting, overlooking criminal misdeeds on behalf of party leaders, etc.) ... whichever party claims that title ... is the next majority party.