From The New York Times, 4/9/06:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/09/weekinreview/09stolberg.html?ex=1302235200&en=318e91f49f2799f6&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
SENATOR 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.
Mr. Lott hopped into an elevator and gestured toward Senator Kay
Bailey Hutchison of Texas, a member of the current Republican
leadership.
"Our spokesperson will handle this response," he said, evoking
laughter from reporters as the elevator doors shut.
Mr. Lott's deft disappearing act was just a taste of how odd life had
become in Washington last week.
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.
"A staggering collection of misfortunes and failures," declared Harry
C. McPherson of the week.
Mr. McPherson should know; he has watched power ebb and flow in town
since he came to Washington half a century ago as a Senate aide to
Lyndon B. Johnson.
After years of remarkably efficient Republican rule, Congress felt
last week like a free-for-all, as conservatives and moderates seemed
liberated to pursue their own agendas, something they could never have
done when Mr. Delay was their leader.
The sudden weakening of Republican knees on Capitol Hill also
undoubtedly had something to do with the fact that Mr. 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?
Still, with the November midterm election in mind, some Republicans
actually seemed relieved.
"He was a talking point that provided a political angle for the
Democrats; that is now out of the equation," one Republican aide said.
But the talking point had also been the iron fist behind the
Republican's success, and some were wondering how they would get
anything done without him.
On Tuesday afternoon, the House speaker, J. Dennis Hastert -- whose
rise to the highest post in the House had been orchestrated by Mr.
DeLay -- was a no-show at a press conference he had called in his
office.
Instead, he sent four other top Republicans to face the cameras.
"A great asset to our party," said the new Republican leader, John
Boehner, of Mr. DeLay.
"A great friend and ally," said the Rules Committee chairman, David
Dreier.
Then, the quartet turned on its heels and walked off in unison, a row
of gray suits growing smaller against the backdrop of a burgundy red
hallway, with the press corps hollering, "What? No questions?" at
their backs.
By week's end, the wheels seemed to have come off the Republicans'
machine.
The House leaders failed to get party conservatives and moderates to
unite on a budget bill, so they threw up their hands and sent everyone
home a day early for a two-week recess.
Mr. DeLay, meanwhile, told The Washington Times that the new House
leadership lacked vision and an agenda.
"Breaking up our leadership team has taken its toll," Mr. DeLay said.
Here was the man who, having kept conservatives in power by his
relentless insistence on party discipline, was now turning around on
his way out the door and telling his former followers that they were
falling down on the job.
"These guys went out on so many limbs for DeLay," said the
Congressional scholar Norman J. Ornstein.
"And now he saws it off just as they're trying to get their act
together."
The Republican implosion was just as dramatic in the Senate.
So many senators crammed into the press gallery on Thursday to take
credit for a bipartisan pact on immigration legislation that the place
looked like a New York subway car at rush hour.
Then, Friday, the bill fell apart.
The Republican leader, Bill Frist, had staked his presidential
fortunes on getting a bill passed, and he looked a bit ashen as he
greeted reporters afterward.
It had been "an interesting day," he wanly remarked.
Finally, President Bush, at the other axis of Republican power, ran
into his own troubles after court papers revealed that I. Lewis Libby,
Vice President ***** Cheney's former chief of staff, had told
prosecutors Mr. Bush had approved the disclosure of an intelligence
report in 2003.
This was at the very time the White House was trying to counter
criticism that it had inflated the case against Saddam Hussein.
"Washington is broken," Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the 2004
Democratic presidential nominee, said Friday.
"It's not unlike a classroom in school, where the kids have gotten
unruly and nobody's calling them to order."
_______________________________________________________
Yeah, but who's gonna fix it, and how?
Harry
.
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