More GOP trouble for The Bug Man

I generally skip all the Sunday morning political shows because I end up in a bad mood after watching them, but I am oh so sorry I missed the George Stephanapolous shindig yesterday. Two of his guests were Republican Congressman Chris Shays of Connecticut and Republican Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. Shays also gave an interview to the AP. As reported by the AP and the Washington Post, here are some of the things Shays had to say about The Bug Man:

Tom's conduct is hurting the Republican Party, is hurting this Republican majority and it is hurting any Republican who is up for re-election.

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My party is going to have to decide whether we are going to continue to make excuses for Tom to the detriment of Republicans seeking election.

According to both sources, Shays has called for DeLay to resign as House Majority Leader.

The Washington Post also has some quotes by Shays at a town hall meeting in Greenwich, Connecticut on April 9:

(DeLay is) an absolute embarrassment to me and to the Republican Party.

If he ever runs for speaker, I get to vote on the House floor, and my "no" vote combined with the Democrats' means he will never be speaker.

Do I think Tom DeLay will be the majority leader by the end of this term? No. . . . I don't think Tom DeLay is going to survive.

Now, to be fair, Shays has been a DeLay opponent for some time. However, the problem for The Bug Man is that he ain't getting a lot of support from the big guns, as reported by the Washington Post:

The comments by Shays and Santorum came amid growing signs of waning support from DeLay's friends. President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) all have taken more moderate positions than DeLay on restraining federal judges. On Friday, when Bush was asked about DeLay's comments that judges are out of control and should be held accountable, the president replied that he believes in "an independent judiciary." He said nothing about DeLay.

And what were the comments from Santorum? From the AP:

Rick Santorum, the No. 3 Republican in the Senate, said Sunday that DeLay needs to explain his conduct to the public.

"I think he has to come forward and lay out what he did and why he did it and let the people then judge for themselves," Santorum told ABC's "This Week."

All The Bug Man has done so far is claim that he is the victim of a vast Left Wing conspiracy. When even DeLay wannabe Santorum says that is not enough, that is not good news for The Bug Man.

Santorum also said, "Now you may not like some of the things he's done. That's for the people of his district to decide, whether they want to approve that kind of behavior or not." I have two responses for Rick. First, the Houston Chronicle commissioned John Zogby to conduct a poll among voters in DeLay's district. The poll shows that DeLay's support among his constituents is declining. Here are the opening paragraphs from the Chronicle's April 5, 2005, article:

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's footing among his constituents has slipped drastically during the past year and a majority of his district disapproves of how he handled the Terri Schiavo case, according to a Houston Chronicle poll.

Nearly 40 percent of the 501 voters questioned Wednesday through Friday said their opinion of the powerful Sugar Land Republican is less favorable than last year, compared with 11 percent who said their view of him has improved.

Half of the respondents gave DeLay a somewhat or very favorable rating.

Yet 45 percent said they would vote for someone other than DeLay if a congressional election in the 22nd District were at hand; 38 percent said they would stick with him.

"There seems to be no question that there has been an erosion in support for the congressman," said John Zogby, whose polling company, Zogby International, performed the survey. "He is posting numbers that one would have to consider in the dangerous territory for an incumbent. And he isn't just an incumbent, he is a longtime incumbent."

The statistics are rife with political warning signs for DeLay, particularly among his Republican supporters, Zogby said.

Seventy-eight percent of those Republican voters said they picked DeLay in 2004, and 63 percent said they would do so again. "He hasn't lost a majority of conservatives, but he has lost enough of them to pull him down,"said Zogby, who has conducted public opinion polls since 1984. "These are not good re-election numbers."

It looks like "the people of his district" ain't exactly thrilled with his conduct.

My second response to Santorum is "You just don't get it." It is not just the people in DeLay's district that have to decide whether they want to approve DeLay's behavior. All your Republican buddies in the House have to make that decision as well. And if the people in their districts do not approve of it, many of your Republican buddies just might not be in Congress after the mid-term election. And instead of actually making an express decision, your Republican buddies in the House have changed the rules to protect The Bug Man, have attempted to further change the rules, and booted the Republican chairman of the House Ethics Committee (after that Committee officially admonished DeLay) with a DeLay toady. That does not look good, and it smells even worse. That's what Shays is saying.

Perhaps a Senator from Connecticut, Chris Dodd, says it best: "(DeLay) becomes the poster child for a lot of the things the Democrats think are wrong about Republican leadership. As long as he's there, he's going to become a pretty good target."

And that goes for anybody who tries to defend what The Bug Man has done.