Lest we forget…Dreier voted for corruption
As I mentioned earlier, breaking the ethics truce might be good politics for November because it’ll get Republicans on the record. Of course some of them, David Dreier included, are already on the record as being pro-corruption. As Josh Marshall reminded us in January:
Ahhh, The DeLay Rule, truly the muckraker’s gift that keeps on giving. The DeLay Rule was the rule House Republicans passed in mid-November 2004 to allow Tom DeLay to stay in charge of the House of Representatives even after he was indicted. The vote itself and the subsequent, slow erosion of support for it turned out to be a good proxy for who in the GOP caucus was a down-the-line DeLay man or woman, wiling to bend pretty much any rule to cover for DeLay and his House machine.
Moderates like Chris Shays were perhaps the most prominent and vocal in their opposition to the Rule. But what opposition there was stretched across ideological lines in the caucus, pulling in a number of the more conservative members. At least conservatives of a certain turn.
So today a friend points out to me that Speaker Denny Hastert has tapped California Rep. David Dreier (R) as his ethics czar, the one who’s going to clean the place up and start cranking on a ‘lobbying reform’ bill.
So where did Dreier come down on The DeLay Rule?
As you’d expect, pretty much a down-the-line DeLay Rule man.
Here’s a copy of the letter he sent constituents over a year ago defending his vote.
Why was the DeLay Rule necessary? Because “it became apparent that by simply bringing an indictment in any court, a local political operative could remove a Congressional leader at a key or sensitive time by bringing an indictment against him or her for political purposes … The rule change was a necessary step needed to remove an incentive for a partisan prosecutor to make a frivolous or baseless accusation against a Member of the House.”
So now Dreier is the guy to crack down on law-breaking. But a year ago his agenda was cracking down on prosecutors.
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