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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mr. Palau who wrote (679375)	4/14/2005 1:46:28 PM
From: PROLIFE	Respond to of 769670

Personally, I think no family members should be able to draw salaries from PACs OR work for any lobby in Washington, (remember Daschle's wife?) But, until they make it illegal you girls are just spinning your wheels, since both parties do it.

To: Mr. Palau who wrote (679375)	4/14/2005 2:01:49 PM
From: PROLIFE	Respond to of 769670

Thursday April 14 2005 THE TOM DELAY UPROAR: Maura Reynolds of the Los Angeles Times writes that "Republicans say a crucial factor in whether DeLay rides out the storm is whether he retains the president's support." This is bunk. It's also an attempt to portray Scott McClellan's comments yesterday as more important (and also less favorable to DeLay) than they really were. First, just as a practical matter, President Bush is not going to run away from Tom Delay - though he's also not going to run and wrap his arms around him right now either. The President will almost certainly keep his distance and let things play out. More importantly, however, Reynolds misses how the process works. If Tom DeLay is going to fall, it's going to happen from the bottom up, not the top down. In other words, DeLay's survival depends almost entirely on whether members of the Republican conference in the House stick with him or not. At this point (putting aside Chris Shays for the obvious reasons) that is something that remains to be seen. As Mike Allen writes in this morning's Washington Post: "People who are working in support of DeLay's position said the next several days would be critical, as leaders wait to see whether any other House Republicans call for his resignation." In an interview yesterday with editors and reporters with the Washington Times, DeLay claimed his support in the House was solid. Right now, this looks to be true. One of the reasons DeLay's support is holding is because most GOP House members know that many of the charges against him are either completely bogus (like the one about having family members on the payroll which, as the Los Angeles Times reports this morning, a number of Democrats and Republicans have done for years) or have been blown way out of proportion. Still, despite DeLay's press conference yesterday where he apologized for "inartful" remarks about judges in the wake of the Terri Schiavo case, there is still a great deal of hand wringing among GOP House members over the way DeLay is handling the matter. They think he's being too combative and too defensive, which only makes matters worse. For example, in yesterday's interview with the Washington Times DeLay said he's been trying for weeks to present material to the House Ethics Committee, but said that Democrats are refusing to convene the committee to keep him from clearing his name. But as this quote from a Senior Aide to Speaker Hastert appearing in today's Chicago Tribune demonstrates, even if DeLay's claim is true some members question whether blaming partisanship is the right strategy: "I'm not sure why he doesn't lay it out, regardless of whether the ethics committee ever meets or not," said the Hastert official, who spoke on condition of not being identified. "Take whatever there is and say, `Here it is,'" the official said. "You have to at one point say, `Here I am, here it is, what's the question.'" At this point DeLay seems inclined to go the opposite course: hunker down and try and ride out the storm. But Democrats are surely going to milk DeLay's troubles for all they are worth and members of the press seem more than willing to help keep the story alive. An anonymous Democratic staffer summed it up succinctly in the Houston Chronicle this morning: "Tom DeLay is still an asset, not a liability." If that balance sheet ever changes, DeLay will be in trouble. HEADLINE BIAS: On a related note, here is a pop quiz. Listed below are headlines from the four largest newspapers in the country that ran atop stories of Tom Delay's press conference yesterday where he apologized for his comments on judges in the wake of the Schiavo case. Guess which one appeared on page one of The New York Times: "DeLay Apologizes for Comments" "Embattled DeLay Says He's Sorry" "DeLay Tempers His Statements" "DeLay Asks House Panel to Review Judges" You know the bias is bad when it stands out like a sore thumb from the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune. - T. Bevan realclearpolitics.com