Dennis Hastert is a genius (in reverse)
The Post reports that Hastert has decided to reverse controversial changes (elimination) of House ethics rules. "A congressional aide said that changing the rules will mean "a couple of great days for Democrats" but that Republicans have calculated this will deny them long-term use of the ethics issue heading into next year's midterm elections."
But wait, Hastert has not decided to completely reverse all of the changes. Instead he seems willing to partially reverse only the automatic dismissal rule.
A House Republican leadership aide said that the automatic-dismissal rule is "the rule that is most commonly believed to be designed to protect Tom DeLay" and that it was "impossible to win the communications battle" on it.
Leaving his office last night, Hastert would not say what form his recommended changes will take and suggested that one option might be to lengthen the time before the automatic dismissal occurs, to perhaps 90 or 120 days.
This means that the Democrats will have a couple of great days followed by great weeks while Hastert insists on keeping, say, the rule that allegations can not be investigated unless a majority of the committee agrees followed by a couple of great days when he concedes. Hastert has guaranteed that efforts by House Republicans to protect DeLay will stay in the news along with any possible reports of newly uncovered ethical lapses of Rep DeLay (if he has a habit of ignoring ethics and wasn't just careless about a credit card number, the job description for his wife and some champagne in a hot tub).
Obviously the Democrats are not accepting a compromise, since they know they are right and that debate on the issue helps them politically.
The ethics committee's top Democrat, Rep. Alan B. Mollohan (W.Va.), said that if the Republicans rescind all three rules changes made in January, Democrats would vote to let the ethics committee operate. "That would return you to rules that were fashioned in a bipartisan way," he said. Without a full reversal, Democrats will demand creation of a bipartisan ethics task force, he said.
Now Hastert might just be dumb, but I think he also has to get DeLay's permission and DeLay cares more about delay than the Republican party.
update: In the event the Repubs rolled all the way over. Too bad.
