Republicans in disarray ... Wheels come off well-oiled political machine

[struggle4progress]

Republicans in disarray after a week of disasters
Wheels come off well-oiled political machine
Sheryl Gay Stolberg, New York Times

Sunday, April 9, 2006

Washington -- Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott, the former Republican leader, was headed out of the Capitol on Friday when he was asked to sum up a week in which Tom DeLay said he would quit Congress, the House budget unraveled, the Senate immigration bill crumbled and President Bush became embroiled in the city's most famous leak probe ...

There had already been months of bad news: the war in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, the political embarrassment over port security. But not until last week's cluster of political crises did Washington's Republicans seem to exhibit real self-doubt. Suddenly, the swaggering Alphas who run this city were turned into self-effacing Betas ...

The sudden weakening of Republican knees on Capitol Hill also undoubtedly had something to do with the fact that DeLay's announcement Tuesday morning -- after months of insisting that he would run again -- came just days after one of his former aides, Tony Rudy, agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors in the Jack Abramoff corruption probe. In the Capitol corridors, there was a palpable sense that lawmakers were looking over their shoulder, wondering: Who's next? ...

On Tuesday afternoon, the House speaker, Dennis Hastert of Illinois -- whose rise to the highest post in the House had been orchestrated by DeLay -- was a no-show at a news conference he had called in his office. Instead, he sent four other top Republicans to face the cameras ...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/04/09/MNGVTI6CFM1.DTL

[Trevelyan]

1. Sibyl Edmonds, 911 Whistleblower, mentioned Hastart, bribes and gold and

said in interview before she was gagged that many high ranking Congresspersons would be going to jail if the things she saw were investigated.

Please go to her site and sign her petition to ungag her and to release her redacted testimony in the 911 report. http://www.JustACitizen.com

Look up gold and the World Trade Center. you might be surprised.

[Meridian]

4. I didn't know that Hastert was involved in silencing Edmonds.

Thanks for the info.

[Stand and Fight]

2. Great article... Until the end.

What the hell did McKinney's screw-up have to do with Republicans imploding? Absolutely nothing. Nonetheless, the article does very good at touching on some of the really BIG cracks that are starting to FINALLY appear in the Republican armor. ;)

[saltpoint]

3. Just the mention in those excerpts of Trent Lott and Dennis Hastert

gives us a good gauge of the depth of the problem.

These guys are 5-star mediocrities. They should never be let anywhere near power.

Some of that sentiment is partisan, I admit. But enough isn't to draw a comparison with other public servants of either party. Lott was a pro-Nixon vote in the Nixon impeachment group and Dennis Hastert is a mean-spirited hack.

Let's get some hard volunteering going in the next months leading up to the November midterms.