April 21, 2005

Too long Delayed?

Michael Tomasky writes an excellent column about Tom Delay.

It should have shocked the media, whose job it is to protect our civic institutions, a long time ago that the Congress of the United States is run today as a rampantly undemocratic fief. Any casual conversation with a Democratic Hill staffer will lead without fail in the inevitable direction: They don’t see bills, they don’t know when something’s coming out, they don’t know half the time what they’re voting on. From Republicans emanate occasional public grumblings about how things are run -- grumblings that, wouldn’t you know it, tend always to be recanted two days later. The Prospect has highlighted these abuses. And every once in awhile -- as during the contentious Medicare vote in November 2003, when DeLay and the Republican leadership held the floor open for three extra hours in the middle of the night while they “persuaded” members to change their vote to “yea” -- the mainstream papers take note for two or three days and register their disapproval.

He goes on to castigate the "moderate Republicans" who could/might have held their compatriots in check but haven't, and concludes:

The system isn’t working by a long shot. If the system had worked, DeLay would have been exposed long ago -- first by the media, which would have done far more to reveal the ethical and procedural corruption of his regime, and second by moderate Republicans, who could have made a difference if they’d had the nerve, en bloc, to stand up and say something.

Nicely done.

Posted by Linkmeister at April 21, 2005 03:56 PM
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