Conservatives Without Conscience (21 page)

Creating a Permanent Republican Majority

House Republicans have gone beyond raising money from well-heeled conservative sources as a means to better finance their candidates, and beyond rough campaign tactics, to hold their majority status. They have, in effect, literally rigged the system. Today House seats are amazingly secure, because Republicans have designed a strategy to give themselves safe congressional districts; once again Democrats remain silent because they do not want to be seen as whiners, or to raise process issues. When the
Congressional Quarterly
reported that in 2004, only 29 of 435 House races were truly competitive, and of those only 13 were “really close races,” the
Economist
declared, “The sheer uncompetitiveness of most House races takes one’s breath away…. In 2002, just four incumbents lost to challengers at the polls (another four lost in primaries). North Korea might be proud of this incumbent re-election rate: 99%.” How did this happen? the
Economist
inquired. The answer is as old as the nation, but with the use of computers, the process has become much more refined: “By gerrymandering to cram Democrats into a smaller number of super-safe seats [primarily in urban areas] while spreading Republicans into a large number of ‘designer districts’ which they win by 55–60%,” the investigators discovered. They pointed to the “particularly brutal” redistricting engineered by Tom
DeLay in Texas, which earned him an indictment for “money laundering,” a serious felony charge under Texas law.
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The remarkable audacity DeLay exhibited in his Texas redistricting project—rigging, in effect, the entire state of Texas—enabled Republicans to pick up four additional seats in the House of Representatives. In 2001 DeLay, himself a former member of the Texas state legislature, began plotting a takeover of the Texas “Lege” by Republicans so they could redraw the state’s congressional districts and send more Republicans to Washington. Lou Dubose wrote in the
Texas Monthly
that DeLay “meant to perpetuate, in one brash swipe, a conservative Republican majority and agenda in the U.S. House until the roosters quit crowing and the sun stayed down.”
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This was accomplished with the grease of elective politics: money. To win control of the Texas legislature DeLay set up a new political action committee, Texans for a Republican Majority (TRMPAC, known as “trim-pack”), and made himself the chairman of the honorary board. John Colyandro, a longtime associate of Karl Rove’s who was well-known to DeLay, was appointed TRMPAC’s executive director. Americans for a Republican Majority (ARMPAC), another DeLay organization (run by his top political aide, Jim Ellis) contributed $50,000 (or $75,000, according to a few reports) in seed money. Colyandro and Ellis, along with DeLay’s daughter, began raising money from corporations throughout the country: $25,000 from Bacardi USA; $25,000 from Phillip Morris; $25,000 from Sears, Roebuck; and various amounts from countless others having absolutely no business with the Texas legislature but a lot of business with Tom DeLay in Washington. Even the Choctaw Indian tribe of Mississippi, which was represented in Washington by superlobbyist and DeLay friend Jack Abramoff, contributed $6,000. TRMPAC went on to raise $1.5 million during the 2002 campaign cycle, and spent almost all of it on winning control of the Texas legislature. DeLay’s handpicked candidate, Tom Craddick, became Speaker of the Texas House, and in this position would help DeLay redraw the
political map of the state. The misstep that returned to haunt this undertaking was that Texas law prohibits corporations from contributing to Texas election campaigns.
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Texas Republicans, once in control of the Lege, pushed to enact their redistricting plan, while Democrats employed numerous tactical and procedural moves to try to prevent this. At one point, Democratic legislators left the state in droves to prevent Republicans from obtaining the quorum necessary for enacting gerrymandered districts into law. Tom DeLay called the Federal Aviation Administration and demanded they send airplanes out to locate the missing Democratic legislators, dubbed the “Killer D’s” by the media.
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The Killer D’s could stall only so long, however, and in 2003 the Texas legislature enacted a new redistricting plan. This action was unprecedented; throughout the twentieth century such redistricting had been undertaken only in response to the decennial U.S. Census’s update of population figures. Much of the negotiation took place behind closed doors, in conference committee, with DeLay brokering the deal and insisting the plan meet his approval. DeLay, who personally carried drafts of the new law back and forth between the Texas House and Senate, resisted any and all attempts to make the plan fair, so determined was he to secure every possible advantage for Republicans.
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“By drawing districts that snaked hundreds of miles across various counties,” the NAACP reported, “Republicans drained African American and Latino voters from integrated Democratic districts and
replaced them with enough white Republican voters to outnumber remaining white Democratic voters. As a result, DeLay converted a 32-member Texas Congressional delegation that had been evenly divided between the parties into one in which Republicans enjoyed a 10-seat advantage after the 2004 election.”
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Under the federal Voting Rights Act, Texas was required to submit any changes in its voting laws to the federal government for approval by the Department of Justice. After it sent its 2003 redistricting plan to Washington, five lawyers and two analysts in the department’s Civil Rights Division rejected it in a seventy-three-page memorandum highlighting its flaws. But Bush appointees at the Justice Department rejected the findings of their own experts and approved the highly partisan plan.
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When opponents of the scheme took it to federal court, they ran aground because of the uncertainty of the law under existing U.S. Supreme Court rulings. It was not until late 2005 that the Supreme Court agreed to hear their objections, which makes it unlikely the issue will be resolved before the 2006 congressional elections. In the past, the conservative majority of the Supreme Court has tried to stay out of such political issues, so it remains uncertain whether the high Court will make a ruling in the case. But everyone should hope that the justices opt to clean up this mess, for its ramifications are national.

Indeed, the actions of DeLay and his allies in the Texas legislature have already encouraged similar activity (so far unsuccessful) in other states controlled by Republicans, namely Georgia and Colorado. In turn, a few Democrats, relying on the adage that “you can’t play touch football when the other guy is playing tackle,” have proposed that states they now control, such as Illinois, New Mexico, and Louisiana, pursue their own partisan redistricting plans. But so far Democrats have chosen to talk, not to play this game. DeLay’s actions in Texas provided less than a handful of additional votes, but Republicans have shown that with their authoritarian style they can and will govern the
House, and the nation, with only the slightest majority.
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They have maintained control of the House by mastering “the one-vote victory” strategy, which DeLay has made into an art form.

Although he is not particularly close to Bush II, since he had been openly critical of his father (claiming that moderate Republicans like Bush I were moral compromisers), DeLay is a team player and recognizes the power of the White House, so he has been more than willing to push Bush administration programs. As majority leader, he knew how to count votes and how to twist arms to enact laws with almost no majority support. “Time and again,” the
Washington Post
reported, “on high-profile bills involving Medicare, education and other programs, [the GOP leaders] have calibrated the likely yeas and neas to the thinnest margin possible, enabling them to push legislation as much to their liking as they can in a narrowly divided and bitterly partisan House.”
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For example, the
Post
reported, the 2003 vote on Medicare was 216–215, the Head Start vote was 217–216, and those in favor of providing vouchers for children in the District of Columbia public schools prevailed with a 209–208 vote. By picking up four more votes from Texas in 2004, Republicans gained even greater control. DeLay—and no doubt his successor, John Boehner—held Republican members of the House in line through threats and money and, by playing hardball, demanded and obtained votes when he needed them. But the leaders are not foolish and understand that some moderate members cannot vote for every hard-right measure and survive in office. So the GOP leadership rotates among the moderates in the ranks, not forcing all of them to comply with every vote, but using them one at a time when one vote is needed for victory, as well as when voting on rules. The system is blatantly imperious, completely undemocratic, and conspicuously authoritarian. Massachusetts
Democrat Barney Frank, with two decades of service in the House, correctly stated that the “House of Representatives is no longer a deliberative body.”
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The K Street Project:
Jack Abramoff and His Friends

DeLay, his later successor John Boehner, and key authoritarian cronies have also assembled what may prove the most corrupt lobbying operation in Washington since the “Ohio Gang” was run out of their infamous “little green house” at 1625 K Street in 1923.
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K Street, a wide boulevard lined with office buildings in downtown Washington, D.C., is the corridor where many powerful lobbying firms base their operations. When Republicans took control of Congress in 1995, one of their first moves was to seize control of the lobbying sector.
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When he became Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich deputized then majority whip Tom DeLay to make sure House Republicans were getting their share of campaign dollars from K Street, and to inform the lobbying firms and trade associations that if they wanted access to GOP leaders, they should hire Republicans to lobby.
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This undertaking soon became known as the K Street Project. DeLay was assisted by Pennsylvania Republican Senator Richard Santorum, who regularly approved the names of people to be hired by the K Street firms, and John Boehner “formed his alliances on K Street when he served as chairman of the GOP conference from 1995 to 1998.”
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To make cer
tain lobbying firms were, in fact, hiring conservative Republicans, Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform and the project’s coarchitect, also constantly monitored the operation.
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“We don’t want non-ideological people on K Street, we want conservative Republicans on K Street,” Norquist stated.
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But the K Street Project was about more than just finding jobs for Republicans; it was about money—the big money needed to maintain a Republican majority. “Washington conservatives and the Republican leadership in Congress,” wrote informed political observer John Judis, were pursuing “a strategy for retaining Republican control of Congress and for winning the White House.” That strategy, Judis reported, was to turn K Street, and the business interests it represents, “into loyal soldiers in the new Republican revolution. In exchange for legislative favors, Gingrich, DeLay, and other congressional leaders expected that the businesses would provide funds to keep them in office.”
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When lobbying firms or special interest groups hired someone to the Republican leadership’s disliking, they were punished. For example, in 1998, when the Electronic Industries Alliance (EIA) hired former Democratic representative Dave McCurdy of Oklahoma to head its Washington office, DeLay effectively vetoed the hire. “First, DeLay put out the word that McCurdy would not be welcome in Re
publican leadership offices,” reported Lou Dubose and Jan Reid, which would clearly make McCurdy an ineffective lobbyist. When EIA refused to fire McCurdy, DeLay upped the stakes by pulling from the House calendar consideration of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, an essential piece of legislation for protecting intellectual property on the Internet that a coalition of industry people, including EIA, had worked on for two years. When an end run through the Senate was attempted, DeLay again blocked the bill when it came to the House. “When DeLay used his position as majority whip to block its final passage in the House, he sent K Street a loud, crude message,” Dubose and Reid observed. “He also probably broke the law.”
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Extortion is not something that registers easily with a Double High authoritarian who is busy manipulating the world.

With impunity DeLay “regularly engage[d] in pay-to-play lawmaking and flagrant abuses of power,” one reporter noted.
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DeLay was taking names and making lists, not only of who was being hired to lobby, but of how much money was being contributed to Republicans. Rumor in Washington was that DeLay had “a little black book” he kept on his desk, which he opened whenever a lobbyist came to see him to determine whether he was pleased with the latest contribution made by the organization the lobbyist represented. If DeLay was not happy, he would not be particularly helpful to the lobbyist. When he was satisfied, though, he let it be known through favorable action.
Newsweek
columnist Jonathan Alter did not believe the gossip, so he asked DeLay about it. “DeLay not only confirmed the story,” Alter later wrote, “he showed me the book.” DeLay claimed his time was limited, explained Alter. “Why should he open his door to people who were not on his team?”
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As a result of the embarrassing indictment of Tom DeLay and the guilty plea of the man with whom he had worked most closely on K Street, Jack Abramoff, Republicans were forced to take a few preemptive measures. Those campaigning for his job as majority leader—Representatives Roy Blunt (R-MO), John Boehner (R-OH), and John
Shadegg (R-AZ)—all pledged to lighten up on the K Street Project’s extortion racket. Yet
Roll Call
reported that all of them were, at the same time, relying on their K Street contacts to help them win.
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Even friendly observers acknowledged that Republicans were doing little to change their ways. “The truth is that none of this will truly reduce corruption any more than the previous lobbying reform did,” according to the editors of the
Wall Street Journal.
“If the Members were serious about reform,” the
Journal
advised, “they’d put in place rules that restrict
themselves.
They could insist, for example, that at least three days pass after final legislation is drafted, so they could actually read the bills before they vote on them. Or they could eliminate ‘earmarks,’ which have proliferated under GOP rule and are now a preferred way that members pay off lobbyists.”
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