WP: GOP Leaders Tighten Their Grip on House

[kskiska]

House Republican leaders moved swiftly last week to tighten and centralize control of the new Congress by replacing uncooperative committee chairmen and changing the chamber's rules to deter ethics investigations of leaders.

The Republicans expanded their majority by only three seats in the Nov. 2 election, yet party leaders have been emboldened by GOP domination of all branches of government and appear determined to squelch dissent in their own ranks and to freeze Democrats out of key decisions.

Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) moved to force out the ethics committee chairman, Rep. Joel Hefley (R-Colo.), who supported three formal admonishments of Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) last year, and ousted the chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee for failing to toe the party line on spending. The GOP leaders also rammed through a change in House rules to make it more difficult in the future to file an ethics complaint against DeLay or other members.

A Republican leadership aide said the strategy for the week was to undermine any effort by Democrats to make DeLay as divisive and symbolic a figure as former speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) was in his day. "They want to 'Newter' DeLay -- to isolate him and make him the issue, not any policy issue," the aide said.

(snip)

"It took Democrats 40 years to get as arrogant as we have become in 10," one Republican leadership aide said.

more…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59384-2005Jan8.html