News reported the Tom DeLay indictment with the following, fascinating exchange between Bob Schieffer and reporter Gloria Borger.
Schieffer: "As Jim says, this is just the latest news for Republicans. Reports surfaced recently that federal investigators are looking into some of Senate Republican Leader Bill Frist's stock transactions, a White House aide was arrested last week in connection with a scandal involving a major lobbyist. All of this while, as Jim said, the President's approval ratings are sinking. We want to bring in Gloria Borger from Capitol Hill. Gloria, are Republicans worried about the fallout from this? They must be."Borger: "Oh, you bet they are, Bob. I mean, they understand that this is a real negative for them and that this also really very much plays into the Democrats' charges that Republicans are abusing their power. Republicans control both the House and the Senate. But what they're more worried about, Bob, are those Presidential approval ratings which keep heading south. I had one Republican say to me, we're less worried about Tom DeLay right now than we are about the President. And we think that about 70 seats could really be up for grabs in those mid-term elections. That's twice as many as they had originally thought."
Schieffer: "Well, are they really thinking that maybe they could lose control of the House next time around?"
Borger: "They don't want to think that, Bob. And they know that that would be a real uphill fight for the Democrats, but they're beginning to believe that this smells really, really badly for them, and they're very, very worried about it now because they know they cannot depend on this President and his coattails any longer."
Those are the potential national-level implications for Republicans heading into 2006. Not good for them, not goood at all.
But even before we get to November 2006, there's an election right here in Virginia in just 40 days. What are the implications for Jerry W. Kilgore, who is so closely tied to the DeLay House leadership team (through their mutual friend, House Deputy Majority Whip Eric Cantor), and who has his own corruption scandal (eavesdropping) that just hit the news again recently?
Not good. Not good at all. As Waldo Jaquith wrote with great clairvoyance in December 2004:
...Pride goeth before the fall, and seldom has there been quite as much pride as there is right now [among Republicans].House Democrats were in the same boat before the ?94 Gingrich revolution. They got overconfident, started to feel invincible, and then got nailed for ethical violations. [Late December 2004]?s news that House Republicans are effectively eliminating ethics rules is the clearest sign yet that Republicans have become so over-cocky as to have lost all caution.
I think it?s great. Really, I?m excited. I feel a bit like all of Disney?s PAs probably felt before they hurled all of those lemmings over that cliff so many years ago. Republicans, though, are eliminating themselves ? no assistance necessary.
Ouch. In other words, the question here in Virginia for Jerry W. Kilgore and his campaign team -- led by Scott "Max Cleland is an Osama-Loving Traitor" Howell -- is not WHETHER the DeLay/Frist/Bush daily scandals will hurt them but HOW BADLY. Or, to put it another way, the question the Kilgore Krew might very well be worrying about today is whether they will be the first of many (proverbial) Republican lemmings over the (metaphorical) cliff. For the sake of Virginia's future, we can only hope that is the case.