The House Republican leadership must go. Even if that means the
GOP loses control of Congress. Democrats spent decades practicing
the policy of spending lavishly to win elections. Republicans
refined the practice in just a few years.
More fundamentally, it took the Democrats four decades to fully
succumb to the temptations of power, ruthlessly abusing their
control of Capitol Hill. After only one decade the Republicans are
proving to be even worse.
The GOP began to sell out its principles shortly after seizing
control of Congress in 1994, but the abuses continue to grow.
Today, as a few courageous House fiscal conservatives press for
offsets against the virtually unlimited spending proposed in the
aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the Speaker and his
coterie have acted like a woman scorned. Preaching unity, they have
trashed any Republican suggesting that free-spending bail-outs are
not the conservative way.
Most dramatic was the political dressing down received by Rep.
Mike Pence (R-Ind.), head of the Republican Study Committee, which
represents more conservative members of the GOP caucus. After the
Study Committee inaugurated “Operation Offset,” Pence found himself
invited to a closed-door meeting with Speaker Dennis Hastert
(R-Ill.) and Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.). What was said is
unknown, but it obviously wasn’t pleasant. Pence later spoke to a
student event organized by the conservative Young America’s
Foundation; when discussing the House leadership, he sounded like a
North Korean apparatchik praising Great Leader Kim Jong-il.
The GOP has found that the temptation to abuse its abundant
power extends well beyond dissidents within its own party.
Democrats aren’t even viewed as eligible to own a baseball
team.
IN A CITY RIVEN with political divisions, virtually everyone has
welcomed the arrival of the Washington Nationals baseball team.
Understandably, some people oppose the city government’s gift of a
half billion dollar stadium to the league and prospective
millionaire or billionaire team owners. Otherwise, however,
enthusiasm for the team runs high.
Eight sets of investors are vying to win the franchise, now
owned by the league. One group includes former Secretary of State
Colin Powell. Another features former Republican Senator Peter
Fitzgerald.
And, far more controversially, one group, headed by entrepreneur
Jonathan Ledecky, includes George Soros, a billionaire currency
trader who (horrors!) donated $20 million in the 2004
campaign against George W. Bush. Normally that would seem
unexceptional: sports franchise owners are a motley lot, with their
politics running across the spectrum. Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wisc.), who
owns the Milwaukee Bucks, points to Marge Schott, the late
Cincinnati Reds owner who was suspended for her racial slurs.
But Congress, or, more accurately the Republicans who control
Congress, have taken a proprietary interest in the team. In their
view, apparently, the team will not belong to the investors who
purchase the franchise or even the people of Washington. It will
belong to the GOP congressional majority.
Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.), who ironically chairs the Government
Reform Committee, warned the league against choosing Soros’s group.
At risk, he implied, was the league’s antitrust exemption.
“I think Major League Baseball understands the stakes,” he
explained. “I don’t think they want to get involved in the
political fights.” He added: “They enjoy all sorts of
exemptions.”
It’s ironic that the head of a committee charged with
“reforming” the bloated, inefficient, and wasteful leviathan state
instead spends his time attempting to allocate sports franchises.
It’s frightening that he wants to do so on a partisan basis.
Under fire, Davis backed away slightly. But only slightly.
He told the New York Times: “We finally get a winning
team. Now they’re going to hand it over to a convicted felon who
wants to legalize drugs and who lives in New York and spent $5
million trying to defeat the president? How’s he going to get him
out to the opening game?”
The only proper response is: Who cares?
Who cares whether a minority investor in a baseball team lives
in New York City? Who cares if he opposed George W. Bush? Who care
if he shares the widespread recognition that the “drug war” has
been a dismal failure?
And who bloody well cares whether the President comes out to the
opening game? In fact, George Soros, though a highly political
creature, was not thinking about politics when he joined the
baseball bid. Consortium leader Jonathan Ledecky observed: “Not
once did any political agenda come up.”
GOP Senators seem to have taken a more measured view. Sen. Rick
Santorum (R-Pa.), who held a fundraiser at a Nationals game, said
“I don’t care who owns the team.” Senator and former baseball
player Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) opined: “That’s up to Major League
Baseball.”
In the midst of the controversy, Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig
insisted: “This is a baseball decision. It’s not a political
decision.”
BUT SELIG IS TOO SMART and the stakes are too high for baseball
professionals not to consider the politics. After claiming that he
was not threatening the league, Rep. Davis observed: “This is an
opportunity for baseball to market itself to decision-makers.”
Former Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn suggested that the winner
“must be a group that knows how to work with politicians.”
Which in this case seems to mean those belonging to the
Republican majority.
When it comes to policy there seem to be ever fewer serious
differences between the two leading political parties. Both expand
government power, increase federal spending, lavish money on pork
barrel projects, and put their own interests before that of the
public at every turn. And these days, at last, the GOP appears to
be more ruthless about using every bit of the power that it has
accumulated for its own advantage.
While there are few substantive reasons to choose between the
parties, there now is a practical reason to vote Democratic: to put
at least one organ of national power into someone else’s hands. As
Lord Acton famously observed, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute
power corrupts absolutely.”
The GOP seems intent on proving the truth of Lord Acton’s
axiom.
