DeLay legacy helped GOP empire fall
DeLay legacy may have helped GOP empire fall | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle
How the hammer fell on his own party
The iron hand of Tom DeLay built a GOP empire — and may have contributed its undoing
WASHINGTON - The legacy of the once powerful Republican Tom DeLay of Sugar Land cast a long shadow over last week’s elections, in which voters shrank the ranks of a party accused of being too partisan, too cozy with special interests and too fond of big spending.
As majority whip and later majority leader of the House, DeLay helped build a Republican political empire that he tried to make immune from erosion by pushing the 2003 Texas redistricting plan that threw several veteran House Democrats out of office.
For years the former pest exterminator ruled with an iron hand that brought his party legislative victories but also intensified the poisonous partisan mood in Washington.
DeLay’s combative style indeed was one of the factors in turning the electorate away from the GOP, said Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University.
“I don’t think Tom DeLay as an individual was in the minds of many voters. But the election was very much a reaction to the kind of bare-knuckles politics he practiced,” Baker said. “People thought this extreme, destructive partisanship had gone on long enough.”
Conservatives, independent political observers and officials from both parties also said last week that the close ties between lobbyists and lawmakers that DeLay nurtured, and which led to the political scandal involving convicted former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, cost Republicans some seats as Democrats took over the majority in the House and Senate.
It is going to be hard, but the democrats have to start in January with a plan to lead fairly and without the partisanship they have been subjected to for so many years. The county is fractured and we can thank Tom DeLay, Bush and Co ect. Ruling with fear and an iron fist is not what we need to start this new session of Congress. We never needed it and I am thankful that finally the rest of my country is starting to see it. This has been an era that will be talked about the same way the McCarthy era is.
We are broken and the divide has gotten larger and larger but I see a light at the end of the tunnel. The democrats have the reins now, they must put aside their past animosities and move forward healing that divide. I can only hope they are up to the task and see it clearly.
Filed under: GOP, McCarthy, Misdeeds, Tom Delay, democrat, dirty politics, ethics, politics, redistricting, republican, texas, vote
