In the run up to the November 2006 elections, two state primaries caught the attention of the nation. One Democrat, one Republican – both involving influential politicians. One lost, the other won. The not wholly unexpected outcomes of the two elections were made more noteworthy for the subsequent unseemly behavior of both politicians.
Tom DeLay, the formidable congressman from the 22nd Congressional District of Texas handily won the Republican primary of his district and then announced his plans to resign from US Congress. In what later proved to be an illegal move, the Texas Republican Party tried to put a substitute nominee in DeLay’s place on the ticket without any input from voters. The whole maneuver looked like a set up with many Republicans grumbling that DeLay wanted to put his own puppet in his place so he could continue to pull strings in a district which he would no longer represent! Things were quite murky for a while with court challenges and decisions coming down hard and fast. At last, we are at the end of the trail and DeLay is out of his bag of dirty tricks. Now there is a fair chance that this heavily Republican Texas seat will end up on the Democratic side of the aisle in November. I live in DeLay’s district – I am delighted at his departure at long last. Hopefully, the impressive Democratic nominee, Congressman Nick Lampson will be elected and restore honor and decency in the politics of my district and in the US Congress. About the inglorious end to DeLay’s long and powerful political career, Out Like a Lamb, says the Houston Chronicle. This is one debacle that the arrogant Hammer cannot blame on Democrats – it was all his own making.
"…During his two-decade climb to the powerful position of House majority leader, Sugar Land’s Tom DeLay fashioned a reputation as a combative and controlling legislator who used party loyalty and the cash clout of his political action committees to bend his Republican colleagues to his will.
Thus his decision this week to take his name off the ballot — almost certainly surrendering the seat to Democrat Nick Lampson — is a conclusion to his congressional career that no one could have anticipated. Like a schoolyard bully, DeLay’s bravado fell apart when confronted by authority.
… When he resigned from Congress, DeLay said he did not wish to be the focus of Democratic attempts to portray him as the embodiment of all that was wrong with Congress. DeLay had given his opponents plenty to work with. It was DeLay who promoted the "K Street strategy" that used lobbyists and their money to forward his pro-business agenda. It was DeLay and his aides who allied themselves with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who really does embody the worst aspects of congressional politics.
DeLay watched from the sidelines as the Texas GOP unsuccessfully tried to replace him on the ballot. In a lawsuit filed by Democratic Party officials, a federal appeals court ruled that the GOP could not name a replacement candidate; Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia refused to review the judgment.
DeLay then pulled the plug on his candidacy, ostensibly to clear the way for a futile write-in campaign. "To do anything else would be hypocrisy," the former congressman said in a non sequitur that displayed his disdain for his onetime constituents.
Whatever his reasons for cutting and running, Tom DeLay will never again be seen in the same light by either friends or foes. As a constituent labeled DeLay in a letter to the Chronicle, it seems "The Hammer" has become "The Quitter."
The other primary of course was last Tuesday in which Senator Joseph Lieberman, the conservative Democrat of Connecticut lost to newbie challenger, Ned Lamont in an upset that was not really an upset. The writing was on the wall for Lieberman ever since Bush bussed him on the cheek after the 2005 State of the Union address and Lieberman became marked as Bush’s "best friend and enabler" in matters concerning war and peace, especially the wrongheaded Iraq war. Speak of the kiss of death! And the fact that Lieberman did not accept his defeat at the polls gracefully and has defiantly decided to run as an Independent, proves once and for all that he had long stopped caring for his party and was following his own selfish agenda.
"Six years ago, Sen. Joseph Lieberman was the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee. Tuesday, a majority of Democratic voters in his home state of Connecticut turned him out in favor of a political newcomer. If the national party was wondering how important an issue the war in Iraq would play with voters, Lieberman’s loss provides a lesson Democrats can’t ignore.
The contest between three-term Sen. Lieberman and Ned Lamont, a political novice who failed in a bid for state Senate in 1990, played out in the national media as a referendum on the war and Lieberman’s continuing support of it and President Bush. Much was made of the fact that when many Democrats began backing away from the war last year, Lieberman wrote an essay for the Wall Street Journal chiding Democrats for criticizing "how President Bush took America into the war."
It’s tempting to conclude that Lieberman’s war stance was his undoing and that other Democratic contenders had better take heed. But the story is more complicated than simple Democratic desertion over Iraq. Lieberman votes with Senate Democrats 90 percent of the time, but his constituents tended to notice that his public statements revealed strong Republican sympathies."
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