5.10.2005
Increasingly Embattled, DeLay Scales Back Usual Power Plays (WashingtonPost.com)
By John F. Harris and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, May 9, 2005; Page A01
In the euphemism favored on Capitol Hill, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is "not staff driven." Translation: He is used to doing what he wants.
It happens all the time, DeLay friends and advisers say. An aide will suggest that the leader soften his tone, or back off just a bit from some inflammatory position. As often as not, the Texas Republican will respond with a snort, suggesting that the adviser is more worried about how a decision will play inside the Beltway than how it will be perceived -- if it is noticed at all -- by the rest of the country.
For a full decade, the 58-year-old DeLay's career has prospered because he was usually right in this calculation, say legislators from both parties who have watched him in action. DeLay could be himself -- a partisan with a zeal for ideological combat, a taste for high living and intense religious conviction -- in ways that made him exceptionally powerful in Congress but not especially recognizable to the public beyond.
Suddenly, the old Texas brio that carried him through years of smaller controversies is on the wane. The leader recognizes -- belatedly, some GOP colleagues say -- that the latest questions about his relationships with lobbyists are a problem threatening his career and the GOP majority he helped to build and sustain since coming to the House 20 years ago. Everywhere there are signs of a politician in retreat.
(More ... Increasingly Embattled, DeLay Scales Back Usual Power Plays) ¶ 12:53
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, May 9, 2005; Page A01
In the euphemism favored on Capitol Hill, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is "not staff driven." Translation: He is used to doing what he wants.
It happens all the time, DeLay friends and advisers say. An aide will suggest that the leader soften his tone, or back off just a bit from some inflammatory position. As often as not, the Texas Republican will respond with a snort, suggesting that the adviser is more worried about how a decision will play inside the Beltway than how it will be perceived -- if it is noticed at all -- by the rest of the country.
For a full decade, the 58-year-old DeLay's career has prospered because he was usually right in this calculation, say legislators from both parties who have watched him in action. DeLay could be himself -- a partisan with a zeal for ideological combat, a taste for high living and intense religious conviction -- in ways that made him exceptionally powerful in Congress but not especially recognizable to the public beyond.
Suddenly, the old Texas brio that carried him through years of smaller controversies is on the wane. The leader recognizes -- belatedly, some GOP colleagues say -- that the latest questions about his relationships with lobbyists are a problem threatening his career and the GOP majority he helped to build and sustain since coming to the House 20 years ago. Everywhere there are signs of a politician in retreat.
(More ... Increasingly Embattled, DeLay Scales Back Usual Power Plays) ¶ 12:53
