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Ethical investigations soiling GOP's
image
MSNBC
September 23, 2005
WASHINGTON - Heading into a midterm election year, Republicans find
themselves with not one, but two congressional leaders — Bill Frist in
the Senate and Tom DeLay in the House — fending off questions of ethical
improprieties.
The news that federal prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission
are looking into Frist's sale of stock in HCA Inc., the hospital
operating company founded by his family, comes as a criminal investigation
continues of Jack Abramoff, a high-powered Republican lobbyist, and his ties to
DeLay of Texas.
Less than a week ago, a former White House official was arrested in the
Abramoff investigation.
For Republicans, the timing couldn't be worse.
"The last thing you needed was a Martha Stewart problem,'
Marshall Wittman, a one-time conservative activist who now works for the
centrist Democratic Leadership Council, said of Frist. "He doesn't
even have a good clothing line or a popular television show.'
Stewart, the homemaking doyenne, served five months in federal prison for
lying to authorities about a stock deal and nearly six months more in home
confinement.
Hoping to beat the odds
The midterm elections occur in just over 13 months and Republicans face the
historic reality that the party controlling the White House typically loses
seats in non-presidential years.
Shadowing the GOP outlook is President Bush's diminishing approval
ratings as the war in Iraq, rising oil prices and the need for billions in
federal spending after devastating hurricanes threaten to overwhelm a
second-term agenda.
"It may not cost the Republicans any seats directly, but it's
something they don't need right now,' said John J. Pitney, a
professor at Claremont McKenna College in California who once worked as a
research analyst for House Republicans. "They've got plenty of
problems as it is.'
Still, in the Republican-controlled Congress, Democrats have more Senate
seats to defend — 17 to the GOP's 15 — and redistricting has
made fewer House seats competitive.
Charlie Black, a Republican consultant with close ties to the White House,
expects Frist to be cleared by next year and any whiff of scandal to be
gone.
"I suspect the DeLay matter and this matter will be resolved long
before November '06,' Black said.
An unconventional political past
Frist cultivated a political outsider image when he ran for the Senate in 1994.
"I don't want a career in Washington. I want change,' said
the Tennessee heart surgeon, who didn't register to vote until 1988 and
didn't vote until he was 36.
The year 1994 marked the Republican revolution, when the GOP seized control
of Congress after decades of Democratic rule in the House and years in the
Senate. The GOP portrayed their rivals as beholden to special interests and
corrupt after years of entrenchment.
More than a decade later, Republicans are trying to avoid the perception
that they resemble the Democrats they replaced.
"The overall problem the Republican Party has is it is increasingly
looking like Tammany Hall,' Wittman said. "An odor of sleaziness is
enveloping the Republicans and seeping into the administration.'
Democrats seized on the latest development, with party chairman Howard Dean
criticizing Frist and arguing that Republicans "have made their culture
of corruption the norm.'
The challenge for Frist is to clear his name in a federal investigation
while trying to maintain his hold on the post of Senate majority leader.
Frist came to power in 2002 when Republicans forced out Sen. Trent Lott,
R-Miss., after he made racially tinged remarks in support of former Sen. Strom
Thurmond, R-S.C., a one-time segregationist.
Following in Lott's footsteps?
If Republicans see Frist and the probes as a drag, he could suffer the same
fate as Lott. Frist also is a lame-duck leader who has indicated he won't
seek another term.
Chris Lehane, a Democratic consultant who has managed scandals, said
Frist's political strategy would be to get information out, but that
approach is hardly what a lawyer would advise his client.
An insider trading investigation also raises the possibility of civil action
by shareholders and a discovery process that "disgorges all kinds of
documents,' Lehane said.
"Even information benign in another type of environment — what
about this phone message from your brother' — has added
significance, Lehane said.
Frist has been mentioned as a potential presidential candidate in 2008
— a prospect that looks less likely with the federal probe and his break
with conservatives on embryonic stem-cell research.
"That romance was over before it started,' Wittman said.
© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be
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