Republicans to rescind "DeLay Rule"

The bell tolls for thee, Hammer.

House Republican leaders, acknowledging that ethics disputes are taking a heavy toll on the party's image, decided yesterday to rescind a controversial rule change that led to the three-month shutdown of the ethics committee, according to officials who participated in the talks.

This is an unequivocal moral and political victory for the Democrats. But, it is also a definite, if delayed (no pun intended), victory for the Republicans.

What on earth were they thinking in the first place? Yes, Tom DeLay can help people who toe the line he draws for them. Yes, he can, and often does, hurt those who will not toe that line. But, how could House Republicans have thought that this would stand?

Could their consciences have developed callouses so thick that they convinced themselves that the Delay Rule was the right thing to do? Were they, in fact, so ruled by their fear that they were willing to debase themselves in this way?

Obviously, and despite the president's incomprehensible show of public support, Tom DeLay is on his way out, and it is not the Democrats showing him the door. The GOP has realized that it cannot go into the 2006 election season with The Hammer hanging around its neck.