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Tom DeLay's House

Though Tom DeLay won't return as majority leader, House Republicans who stood behind him are also culpable in the corruption scandal.

Until lobbyist Jack Abramoff started naming names, House Republicans couldn't get enough of Tom DeLay. So let no one pretend the institution is cleansed because DeLay will not be majority leader. This is, after all, the man who fueled a K Street lobbying network that came to be known as "DeLay Inc."

DeLay got his leadership job by shaking down lobbyists and corporations and spending the money to buy the votes of House Republicans. That he is now under indictment in Texas and under suspicion by the Justice Department owes in part to the House's own willingness to look the other way.

House Republicans were so willing to let the Hammer do their dirty work they stood behind him when push came to shove. After the ethics committee voted in 2004 to admonish DeLay for a variety of offenses, the Republican chairman, Joel Hefley, was removed. After DeLay was indicted in Texas and accused of funneling $190,000 in corporate donations to state legislative candidates who would draw new political boundaries, House members stood with him and branded the prosecution as merely partisan.

The Abramoff scandal, though, comes with the image of a black hat and is not so easily explained away. DeLay has called Abramoff "one of my closest and dearest friends," and investigators are just now beginning to piece the puzzle together. One link, as reported by the New York Times , is the Alexander Strategy Group. The group was founded by DeLay's former chief of staff, and its offices once housed DeLay's Americans for a Republican Majority fundraising committee. Alexander has business connections both to Abramoff and to defense contractors that were at the center of the stunning $2.4-million bribery admission of U.S. Rep. Randy Cunningham. Alexander also paid $115,000 in "consulting fees" to DeLay's wife.

These kinds of vulgar excesses have come to define the House because its members have allowed it. On Monday, Speaker Dennis J. Hastert issued a call to "move forward aggressively and quickly to have the House of Representatives address lobbying reform." But his sense of urgency, while appropriate, only calls into question his sincerity. Is he just now recognizing that corruption is a bad thing?

Maybe voters, or prosecutors, will end up removing DeLay from office. But a House that has lived by DeLay's rules will need more than a fresh coat of paint.

[Last modified January 10, 2006, 01:51:15]