[Mb-civic] Hammering Away - George F. Will = Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

Hammering Away
Tom DeLay Is Direct, Uncomplicated -- and Unrepentant

By George F. Will
Thursday, January 26, 2006; A25

RICHMOND, Tex. -- Out here, where the tendrils of Houston's growing 
exurbs reach for open ground, sits Rio Bend, a cluster of new houses and 
other facilities for parents having difficult times with troubled foster 
children -- difficulties like those Tom and Christine DeLay experienced 
with several teenagers they took into their home. Rio Bend was built by 
the DeLays, with help from friends, of sorts.

She, an acerbic realist from south Texas, says more houses are planned 
by their charitable organization, but: "I hated to lose the leadership 
position because it helps me to raise money for those kids." Note her 
agreeably guileless acknowledgment that some friends of Rio Bend may not 
have been seized by simple altruism. She shares her husband's credo -- 
power is useful and should be used -- and knows the moral ambiguities it 
can involve.

He strides like a bantam rooster into the living room of one of the Rio 
Bend bungalows, having just been buoyed by an appreciative luncheon of 
400 Realtors to whom he read a list of earmarks -- personally directed 
spending, aka pork -- he has delivered to his district. Most people, 
battered as he recently has been, would be curled up on the carpet in a 
fetal position. But DeLay is as direct and uncomplicated as the tool 
that supplies his nickname -- "The Hammer" -- and his faults do not 
include being a whiner.

Furthermore, he is not about to plea-bargain in the court of public 
opinion. He chafes under prudential reticence: His attorneys tell him 
not to trumpet the fact that the Justice Department told them he is not 
a target in the Jack Abramoff investigation. But about other matters, 
the bantam is belligerent.

Earmarks? Although recently "they got out of hand," they are, he says, 
necessary and proper because it is best to have spending dictated by a 
politician who knows his district's needs: "We are an equal branch of 
government -- why should we let a bureaucrat decide?" He says that in a 
state such as Illinois, which is dominated by Democrats "who play 
hardball," earmarks are the only way even House Speaker Dennis Hastert 
can get highway money spent in his district.

The K Street Project? That is, getting interest groups to hire 
Republican lobbyists, and to make such hirings fruitful by transactions 
using, among other things, earmarks? The author of this insists: "I'm 
very proud of it." In 1994 "we were coming as a Republican majority into 
a Democratic culture" in Washington. For 40 years, he says, the media 
had hired people congenial to sources who controlled Congress. And K 
Street -- the lobbyists' habitat -- hired Democrats to ensure access to 
Democrats. K Street Republicans "never got to see John Dingell or [Dan] 
Rostenkowski," two Democratic chairmen of crucial committees.

So, DeLay asks: In 1995, what do you think Democratic-dominated K Street 
was interested in? "Helping us get our work done? Secure our majority?" 
Those are rhetorical questions.

DeLay's Democratic opponent this fall will be Nick Lampson, a former 
congressman who in 2004 lost his seat in another district, partly 
because of the redistricting DeLay engineered that resulted in five 
additional Republican seats. DeLay won in 2004 with only 55 percent of 
the vote, partly because he thought that "to set an example" he should 
consent to making his district more Democratic in order to make others 
less so.

Referring to his trial on campaign finance charges brought by a 
notoriously political Democratic prosecutor, DeLay says, with a 
confidence that might be misplaced but clearly is unfeigned, "I'll be 
acquitted by the end of April." Then he says he will secure a 12th term, 
winning "the most expensive congressional race ever ." The national 
Democratic Party and several liberal groups -- already running ads and 
phone banks -- spend, well, liberally.

Because undecided voters are thin here -- he estimates they are about 13 
percent of the district -- this election will be about mobilizing the 
faithful. So the piling on by his critics -- their wretched excesses in 
response to what they perceive to be his -- may help him.

Congress under Republican control has increased earmarks 873 percent in 
a decade and validated the axiom that the more solicitous government 
becomes, the more servile it seems and the more scorn it receives. 
Congress has not been so unpopular since 1994, when Democrats lost their 
40-year grip on the House. But here on the east bend of the Brazos 
River, unlike on the Potomac, the fever for reform is not high. To a 
visiting columnist who waxes censorious about earmarks for highway 
projects, DeLay responds with a notable lack of repentance: "You just 
drove out on one."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/25/AR2006012501780.html
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