Republicans Apoplectic In Texas

Well, Tom "I am the Federal Government" DeLay's little plan to redistrict the map in Texas would appear to be dead, since the deadline was today and it's now evening in the Lone Star State. God love the Democratic rebels in Oklahoma.

This has, apparently, gone very well for the Democrats, as Texas has a habit of admiring this kind of behavior, and DeLay, besides his Huey Long-like attempt to control Texas from Washington, made things worse when he proposed sending the FBI to get them, but apparently Texas House Speaker Craddick said no, as I guess he dodn't want to hand the Democrats the image of Democratic leaders being led away in chains. I kind of wish they had--that would look great in Democratic campaign ads next year, wouldn't it?

Another interesting tidbit about DeLay that's popped up in all of this is how he harassed one of the few black Republicans out of politics, one J.C. Watts of Oklahoma, earlier this year. Why would he do that? Don't the Republicans want black votes? Well, apparently not. According to the story, which spoke to a number of black Republicans(the first statement is from a New Jersey Republican named Rev. DeForest "Buster" Soaries, a black Republican who lost a race against Rep. Rush Holt [D-N.J.] in November.):

"...some Republicans were a little nervous because of my potential appeal to black voters, because if black voters turned out in large numbers for me, many Republicans were afraid that would help other Democrats in other races." He was stunned when some Republican officials urged him to not campaign in black areas. Watts, too, recalls that before his 1990 race for Oklahoma corporation commissioner, a prominent state Republican predicted that Watts would be a disaster for the rest of the GOP ticket. Blacks, the Republican reasoned, would turn out in huge numbers for Watts, but vote Democratic for every other office.

So in other words they'd rather have no black voters turn out at all, solely to minimize risk of Democrats getting votes.

Why am I not shocked?

Watts was the 4th-ranking Republican in the House, and at this point DeLay started gunning for him:

That summer, DeLay's office distributed an array of communications materials to the House Republican Conference, publicly doing Watts's job for him. Then, in December, conservative syndicated columnist Robert Novak wrote that "dissatisfaction" with Watts as conference chair was "being voiced by his congressional colleagues, including other members of the party leadership."

This was apparently because DeLay can tolerate no variation of opinion in the party, and Watts was not enough of a "team player." As we all know teams always show up in the same color, so I guess we can figure out DeLay's problem here. So right this moment he must be choking on his own bile and drawing up many lists of politicians to destroy.

Now let's see if other Democrats learn from this the most important lesson: Republicans only have as much power as Democrats are willing to give them--otherwise why would they hammer the Democrats so hard to go along with them? The message to Democrats everywhere?

Don't go along. Block them. It's easy.

Labels: politics

  ¶ May 15, 2003