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Scandal stalls Bush's second term
(Geoff Elliott, The Australian, October 01, 2005)
This has been a bad week for George W. Bush and the Republican Party. His powerbroker in Congress, Tom DeLay, a man they call "The Hammer" for his ability to ram through legislation, was charged on one count of criminal conspiracy in Texas relating to an alleged campaign finance scam. He has been forced to step down as Republican leader of the lower house under congressional rules . . . In the Senate, Republican leader Bill Frist fronted the media this week to defend himself against allegations of insider trading, after selling a portfolio of shares in a family-owned healthcare company just weeks before its share price plunged after a profit warning. The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating. . . . Meanwhile, there's the continuing investigation into influential lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a former close associate of DeLay, over allegations of a breathtaking scam in which he was said to have defrauded $US80 million from Native American tribes who manage casinos on reservations. . . . Last week the White House's senior procurement officer David Safavian had to resign after being arrested in connection with the Abramoff probe. . . . [Also see: Bush Official Arrested in Corruption Probe] . . . There is also an investigation into a possible leak from the White House of a CIA agent's name, with some of the evidence so far pointing to the President's most influential aide Karl Rove, although Rove denies being the source. . . . Then there's Republican congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham of California, who is under investigation for the sale of his home to a Pentagon contractor at an inflated price, a highly dubious transaction given his role on a congressional budget committee overseeing the Department of Defence. . . . As William Kristof, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, says: "Even though DeLay has nothing to do with Frist and Frist has nothing to do with Abramoff, how does it look? Not good." And conservative newspaper The Wall Street Journal wrote in its editorial in May that there was an odour about DeLay, "an unsavoury whiff" that could claim his career. . . . "Even before yesterday, Mr DeLay was seriously weakened as a political force," the editorial said. "And for that he has himself partly to blame. Our disagreement with the majority leader is that, as the [Republican Party] cemented itself in power, he let incumbency become more important than the principles that elected him." . . . "Tom DeLay was like Tito in Yugoslavia," James Thurber, a professor of government at American University told The Washington Post. "He ruled with fear and also resources to reward people. Now, without DeLay, the house will be Balkanised." . . . Already, the fiscal conservatives within the Republican Party have started to rebel at the open-ended commitments Bush has made to reconstruction in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama after hurricanes Katrina and Rita. . . . But for now the whiff of scandal is sucking the oxygen out of Bush's second term. And for a President at war, trying to win the hearts and minds of Iraq and the Middle East generally, being increasingly distracted at home is a dangerous thing.

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posted by LoZo 3:57 PM