Roy Blunt is a very patient, tolerant man.
Had I been on Meet the Press with Barney Frank, I doubt I could have maintained my composure as well as Blunt.
After watching the segment, my head was pounding. Barney Frank does not sell the Dem message well. Why do the Democrats keep looking to the fringe to be their voice in their DeLay bash fest?
Oh, that's right. The Democratic Party has been hijacked by the loony left. The DNC offers its latest DeLay talking points here.
MTP Transcript Excerpt
MR. RUSSERT: Has he done anything wrong?
REP. BLUNT: My impression is he has not done anything wrong. I know he has certainly spent lots of time and effort over the years, lots of money on ethics attorneys, to be sure he knew where the lines were, and those lines weren't crossed, and that's why we have those ethics rules so that members know where the lines are.
MR. RUSSERT: Congressman Frank.
REP. BARNEY FRANK, (D-MA): One of the things that bothers me, because I don't know the details of all of these things, it's that the Republicans--because Tom DeLay was three times last year criticized by the Ethics Committee, they didn't formally vote the whole House to be critical, but they sent three letters--they called them letters of admonition. Mr. DeLay seriously resented that. In fact, he complained on the floor of the House last week, that letters which said to a member. He didn't mention it happened to be himself. And, so, what happened was the Republican leadership decided to punish the Ethics Committee.
Barney doesn't know the details; yet he blabs on and on and on.
Rather than focus on DeLay's alleged misdeeds, the discussion becomes about changes on the Ethics Committee, Barney complaining the evil Republicans weakened it as part of a diabolical scheme to protect themselves.
REP. BLUNT: Well, the three changes we made, I think, have been blown totally out of proportion in terms of their impact on the Ethics Committee. It's no more difficult to file an ethics charge than it ever was. The three changes were made--one was you should be able to have your own counsel, that the Ethics Committee shouldn't be able to decide who your counsel were. Two were, you should at least know you were being investigated before the Ethics Committee publicly criticizes you, which happened to one of our members last year. And three was that it would take a majority to move forward with an investigation after--I think it's 45 days and then a virtual automatic 45-day extension. You've got 90 days where one party can decide, "We want to continue to investigate."
But there's a reason that the Ethics Committee is divided equally. It's the only committee divided equally, because the reason is it would take a member from the other party always to move forward. Fifteen years ago--Barney mentioned 15 years ago--that's what the rule was 15 years ago: It took somebody from the other party to decide to move forward. Only in 1997 in a package of ethics changes, really without much thought, was it decided, "OK, we're going to have this one area where a majority doesn't have to make a decision and half of the committee can just keep a member perpetually under investigation."
Barney continues to babble and Blunt clearly states the reality of what is happening:
REP. BLUNT: He wants to lay out a case. Tom DeLay wants to lay out that case. I think our friends on the other side know the only effective way he can do that is if the Ethics Committee does its work, and they're using what I think is a totally spurious trumped up reason to say that the Ethics Committee can't do its work. The idea that a majority wouldn't investigate something has nothing to do with whether you could file a charge or whether a member could respond to a charge. Tom DeLay said repeatedly he wants the Ethics Committee to be organized so he can make that case. The Ethics Committee, the Democrats, have refused to organize it on the basis that this one issue that has really never been a problem, but potentially, when you look at it clearly could be a problem, that this one issue ruins the entire ethics process is just absolutely nonsensical and they know it and everybody else does, too, that looks carefully at what's really happened with the ethics changes.
Blunt also appeared on FOX this morning opposite Steny Hoyer. Like Barney, Hoyer shifted the focus to the Ethics Committee.
Could it be the Dems believe that when the actual charges against DeLay are discussed they open themselves up to scrutiny that they cannot withstand?
If, in fact, DeLay has not done anything illegal, the "Get DeLay" battle certainly can't dwell on what he has legally done.
The battle must shift to something else. Judging by the Sunday morning shows, the strategy now is for the Dems to attack DeLay by way of attacking the Ethics Committee.
This entire DeLay things gets more convoluted every day. In the meantime, the business of the people is ignored.
As Blunt said on MTP, TOM DELAY WANTS TO LAY OUT A CASE.
The Dems don't want that. Why? Perhaps it's because DeLay would be exonerated and the Dems would need to find another person to demonize.
In addition, all their anti-DeLay t-shirts and ads would go to waste.
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