Skeletons in the closet love the limelight. I just heard a news blip that Murtha was named to the Top 25 Corrupt Congressmen List. My gut hunch says his star will fall fast and soon.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061116/ap_on_go_co/congress_leaders_29 By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer Thu Nov 16, 6:27 AM ET WASHINGTON - Democrats moved toward picking a top lieutenant to speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi and hoped to put to rest a politically costly family feud that intensified just days after they reclaimed the House from GOP control. Pelosi passed over Steny Hoyer of Maryland, now the assistant minority leader, and endorsed longtime ally John Murtha of Pennsylvania to become majority leader, the powerful No. 2 party post in the House. Yet Murtha could prove to be a problematic candidate because of his penchant for trading votes for pork projects and his ties to the Abscam bribery sting in 1980, the only lawmaker involved who wasn't charged. FBI agents pretending to represent an Arab sheik wanting to reside in the United States and seeking investment opportunities offered bribes to several lawmakers. When offered $50,000, Murtha was recorded as saying, "I'm not interested ... at this point." A grand jury declined to indict Murtha, and the House ethics committee issued no findings against him. "I told them I wanted investment in my district," Murtha told MSNBC's "Hardball" on Wednesday. "They put $50,000 on the table and I said, 'I'm not interested.'" Hoyer, a Pelosi rival, was battling to hold onto the lead in the race with Murtha. A closed-door caucus was to convene Thursday morning, and both candidates were predicting victory via a secret ballot, which allows lawmakers to be evasive when asked of their intentions. The Hoyer-Murtha battle is a no-win situation for Pelosi, who had hoped to avoid the fight. She is expected to be elected speaker of the House, a Constitutional office that is third in line for the presidency, when the new Congress convenes in January with a Democratic majority. Pelosi allies, including confidant George Miller of California, were aggressively courting votes for Murtha. A Murtha victory could create hard feelings among Hoyer allies, especially moderate Democrats. On the other hand, a Hoyer victory could be seen as a defeat for Pelosi in her first major move since Election Day. Either way, the race has roiled a Democratic caucus that will need maximum unity in order to effectively rule the fractious House come January.
Nominee for Speaker: Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) Majority Leader: Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) Majority Whip: Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC) Caucus Chair: Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) Vice-Caucus Chair: Rep. John Larson (D-CT)
Hoyer Beats Pelosi’s Pick in Race for No. 2 House Post By CARL HULSE WASHINGTON, Nov. 16 — House Democrats chose Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland as their majority leader today after a bruising fight that cast a cloud over the party’s post-election celebration. The election of Mr. Hoyer over Representative John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, by a vote of 149 to 86, was an embarrassing setback for Representative Nancy J. Pelosi of California, who will be speaker of the House in the new Congress and had backed Mr. Murtha. Mr. Hoyer, 67, is in his 13th term in Congress and his second as party whip under Ms. Pelosi, who has been Democratic minority leader and was put in line to become speaker when Democrats regained control of the House in last week’s elections. Ms. Pelosi was picked by her Democratic colleagues to be speaker in the 110th Congress, which convenes in January. Her elevation had been a certainty, and it was overshadowed by the battle between Mr. Hoyer and Mr. Murtha. Mr. Hoyer had expressed confidence just before the vote. Asked by reporters in a Capitol hallway whether he thought he had the support he needed, he smiled and said, “I think I do; we’ll find out soon.” House members acknowledged that the increasingly bitter contest for majority leader was sullying the image of unity and new direction that Democrats hoped to convey. “It’s four days that we haven’t talked about our message and built on the euphoria,” Representative Ellen O. Tauscher, a California Democrat who supported Mr. Hoyer, said on Wednesday. “We had such perfect pitch last week.” Downtrodden Republicans enjoyed the spectacle of the split between Ms. Pelosi and those Democrats who rallied behind Mr. Hoyer. “I can’t believe they are self-destructing before they even get started,” said Representative Ray LaHood, Republican of Illinois. “Everyone on our side is giddy.” The Hoyer-Murtha contest was not fought along conventional ideological lines. Mr. Murtha, 74, a staunch conservative on most issues with the exception of his highly publicized opposition to the Iraq war, had the support from some of the most liberal Democrats. Mr. Hoyer, the more liberal of the two, had strong backing from moderates and centrists, as well as some of the most seasoned House Democrats. House and Senate members of both parties had strained to understand Ms. Pelosi’s strategy. They wondered why, in her moment of victory, she injected herself into a leadership fight that was bound to end with the selection of her rival, Mr. Hoyer, or her own choice, a lawmaker criticized for his ethics record, after an election in which Democrats campaigned on a clean-government theme. Mr. Hoyer and Ms. Pelosi have had a sometimes tense relationship, at least in part because he unsuccessfully challenged her for the party whip post in 2001. In that contest, Mr. Murtha ran Ms. Pelosi’s campaign. Mr. Murtha, who is 74 and has been in Congress for almost 33 years, threw more fuel on that fire. Members of the conservative Democratic Blue Dog group said that during an appearance before them Tuesday, Mr. Murtha disparaged an ethics overhaul that Ms. Pelosi and the leadership have been promising as one of their first orders of business. Two lawmakers at the session confirmed that the comment, first reported by the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, left many stunned, given the new scrutiny Mr. Murtha’s deal-making on the Appropriations Committee has drawn, along with his involvement in the 1980 Abscam bribery sting run by the F.B.I. He was never charged in that case, but a widely circulated film showed him being offered a bribe and responding that he was not interested in the money “at this time.” In an interview on the MSNBC program “Hardball” Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Murtha said that at the time of Abscam he was interested in attracting foreign investment to relieve high unemployment in his Pennsylvania district and, though suspicious of the offer, wanted to keep open the possibility of legitimate investment. As for the ethics package promoted by Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Murtha said he was complaining that Congressional wrongdoing was superceding other matters “when we’ve got a war going on and we got all these other issues — $8 billion a month we’re spending.” After writing a letter of support for Mr. Murtha, Ms. Pelosi personally went to bat for him, attending a reception for new members and pressing lawmakers on their choice for majority leader. Her allies say her intervention reflects the sort of risk-taking strategy that has brought her to the brink of becoming speaker, and that it sent a message to lawmakers that if they stick with her, she will reciprocate. But several Democrats said her direct involvement was clouding the Democratic takeover by showing squabbling Democrats in serious disagreement over the direction of the party. “This is somewhat distracting us,” Mr. Hoyer conceded Wednesday, even as he predicted that he would win the race and that the party would avoid substantial fallout. “I expect that we will bring the party together and become unified and move on from this,” he said in a brief interview. Mr. Hoyer came in for criticism of his own Wednesday from an outside watchdog group, Public Citizen. It ranked him as a top Congressional recipient of contributions from lobbyists and political action committees, receiving more than $5.6 million in PAC money since 2000. Mr. Murtha collected about half that much. “Both candidates for House leadership have taken large amounts of special interest money,” said Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen. Mr. Murtha and his allies have emphasized the role he played in building Democratic opposition to the Iraq war, an issue that was crucial to the party’s victories last week. Mr. Hoyer and his supporters acknowledge the import of Mr. Murtha’s turnaround after his initial support of the war. Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts described it as a “Nixon goes to China moment,” but said it did not entitle Mr. Murtha to the leadership post. Representative Dennis J. Kucinich, a liberal Democrat from Ohio who disagrees with Mr. Murtha on major social issues like abortion and gun control, said in a letter distributed to his colleagues that Mr. Murtha’s leadership on the war outweighed other considerations. “We need Jack Murtha for majority leader,” Mr. Kucinich wrote, “because at a critical moment on the major international policy issue facing America and the world, he showed an openness, a readiness to listen and a willingness to set a new direction, based on new information. This is the mark of someone who moves forward with courage.” http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/16/u...=1163739600&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print
pelosi's first battle, her first defeat. wow, that didn't take long, but good on the dems for starting afresh.
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/11/07/exit-polls-corruption/ According to exit polls, corruption was #1. Iraq was 4th after terrorism and the economy.
Looks more like he's wringing his hands -- too bad he can't wash them well enough to make them come clean.
isn't the fact that the dems ovewhelmingly rejected murtha a step towards eradicating corruption? I think this election showed that The Achilles heel of the Republican Party IS corruption and dems should stay away from it if they know whats good for them
Agree. That was my point. Corruption brought down the Republicans. Now the Democratic Party must keep themselves spotless lest the worm turns on them. Both parties have criminals esconsed in the highest levels of their ranks. The press and public is ignoring the Democratic flaws at the moment. How long the Democratic Party can keep its skirts clean will determine how long they will govern.
It was a smart move. Murtha may well be clean, but the perception is that he isn't. Supporting him effectively says they don't care about corruption. Congress has to be above reproach. It's good from a public relations standpoint that they appear to understand this. I would hope my Party would learn it some day.
All politicians could learn a lesson from Al Gore. Al Gore the politician was stiff, a bore and a tool of the corrupt system. Al Gore the ex-vice president suddenly is speaking his mind, show some personality and acting like a normal human being. It would be refreshing if more politicians spoke there mind and weren't tools of the lobbyists. I kind of wish Charles Barkley did run for political office, talk about speaking whatever is on your mind.
A good post. Unlike thumbs, you give Murtha the benefit of the doubt. I haven't seen anything to prove the man was "unclean," and find it damn near impossible to believe that if there was anything to this, Karl Rove wouldn't have used it during the election, or when Murtha was making a name for himself calling out the Bush Administration and Rumsfeld on Iraq. Regardless, the Democratic Party has new leadership for the new Congress in place, and the GOP merely retains the same old crew, minus Hastert. Pelosi didn't handle this well, but it's early, she hasn't taken over as Speaker... yet, so we can all await the fun come January. D&D... the Only Thing Better is a B&B with a Private Hot Tub!
[QUOTE=Deckard]A good post. Unlike thumbs, you give Murtha the benefit of the doubt. I haven't seen anything to prove the man was "unclean," and find it damn near impossible to believe that if there was anything to this, Karl Rove wouldn't have used it during the election, or when Murtha was making a name for himself calling out the Bush Administration and Rumsfeld on Iraq Regardless, the Democratic Party has new leadership for the new Congress in place, and the GOP merely retains the same old crew, minus Hastert. Pelosi didn't handle this well, but it's early, she hasn't taken over as Speaker... yet, so we can all await the fun come January. Deckard, Murtha was caught on tape. The 2008 election will belong to the Democratic Party unless they screw it up with tainted leadership -- as Pelosi is wont to do. As I said in earlier posts, she and Tom DeLay are cut from the same cloth. Pelosi was attempting to move the party well to the left, where Democrats are vulnerable. Instead, the new Blue Dog Democrats and other centrists dealt her an embarrassing, albeit self-imposed defeat to stay "centered," where they can and should win in 2008.
