Posted by Orin Kerr:
Wall Street Journal on Tom DeLay:
These are familiar charges, notable chiefly because they are coming
from the [1]Wall Street Journal's editorial page:
By now you have surely read about House Majority Leader Tom
DeLay's ethics troubles. Probably, too, you aren't entirely clear
as to what those troubles are--something to do with questionable
junkets, Indian casino money, funny business on the House Ethics
Committee, stuff down in Texas. In Beltway-speak, what this means
is that Mr. DeLay has an "odor": nothing too incriminating, nothing
actually criminal, just an unsavory whiff that could have GOP
loyalists reaching for the political Glade if it gets any worse.
The Beltway wisdom is right. Mr. DeLay does have odor issues.
Increasingly, he smells just like the Beltway itself.
. . .
Taken separately, and on present evidence, none of the latest
charges directly touch Mr. DeLay; at worst, they paint a picture of
a man who makes enemies by playing political hardball and loses
admirers by resorting to politics-as-usual.
The problem, rather, is that Mr. DeLay, who rode to power in 1994
on a wave of revulsion at the everyday ways of big government, has
become the living exemplar of some of its worst habits.
. . .
Whether Mr. DeLay violated the small print of House Ethics or
campaign-finance rules is thus largely beside the point. His real
fault lies in betraying the broader set of principles that brought
him into office, and which, if he continues as before, sooner or
later will sweep him out.
References
1. http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110006479
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