On Sunday Chris posted about Chris Shay’s sudden change of heart on Tom Delay, and while we all agree that Delay is about as corrupt of a political hatchet man as has existed since the days when Richard Nixon spent his evenings adding names to his enemies list, there was a tiny bit of waffling (ok like one person) in the comment section about whether we should call Shays on his hypocrisy. Rather than chime in late in the comments section I wanted to build on Chris’s post from Sunday night.

After last years elections the Republican caucus led by Delay decided that it was in their interest to remove the provision in their internal rules that leadership members who were indicted could not continue to serve in their leadership positions. A group of Republicans led by Chris Shays who had narrowly escaped defeat in November came out of their caucus exclaiming that they we’re all a part of a small handful of Republicans who stood on principal and voted against the rule change in their caucus. After the rule change Josh Marshall and the rest of us started writing, calling and emailing our members of Congress to find out where they stood on the rule change to protect Delay. After the press reports about the rule change the Republican caucus demurred right before the start of the session and exclaimed that the rule for the Republican caucus would not actually be changed. I recount that history because for the most part, expect for copies of the letters that Josh has archived, that whole era is a part of blog history and doesn’t mean anything.

The Republican caucus decided that instead of actually changing their own conferences rule they would change the rules of the House of Representatives and force a majority vote in the ethics committee to stop any investigation into the ethical lapses. Now we’re talking about investigations here, not actual punishment which would have always required an actual majority vote. It was leaked widely before that move that the GOP was going to remove any member on the ethics panel that was not 100% loyal to Delay. So instead of changing the rules of their own caucus, they changed the rules of the entire House of Representatives in what had previously been a non-controversial vote approving the rules of the house. That vote is on the record and we don’t really need to take anyone’s word for how they voted in conference. The point of recounting this larger history that everyone already knows is to point out that while we may think Chris Shays is a nice guy, and is doing something right by speaking out by saying that Tom Delay should resign, he’s already made the most powerful statement on what he thinks should happen to Republican members who traffic in corruption. That vote was 220 to 195 along part lines and Shay’s voted yes to change the rules to gut the ethics panel in the house. In fact every Republican member of Congress that fancies themselves as moderates, or not tied to the corrupt or is in a highly competitive district voted to gut the ethics panel. Castle – Yes; Leach – Yes; Mark Kirk – Yes; Chris Shays – Yes; Kennedy – Yes; Simmons – Yes; Hostettler – Yes…..