American Politics Journal -- Stacking the Deck, CANF-Style



Home • Latest • Archive • Search

Hint to the GOP:
Don't Make Threats You Can't Carry Out
by Tamara Baker

Monday, May 8, 2000 -- SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA (AmpolNS) -- So, Patrick Kennedy and the DCCC are suing Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) over extortion and terroristic threats, and what does the GOP do?

Make MORE terroristic threats!

Yupper, GOP, that's the way to do it: just give the DCCC more evidence to use against you! Brilliance, my lads, sheer brilliance.

The GOP is hoping that every single person in the Democratic leadership is stupid as they themselves are, and also scares easily. This isn't even a trial balloon; it's just an empty threat that the GOP has no intention of carrying out. (Not if they're smart. Which, I admit, has become more and more open to debate over the past few years.)

The GOP knows perfectly well that the Dems don't raise money the way DeLay does. (This inconvenient thing called "morality" gets in the Democrats' way, don't you know.)

Perhaps DeLay and the Republicans would be better served by examining just WHY so many of their donors are willing to testify on behalf of the Democratic plaintiffs of this suit. But naw, that would make sense.

The following material in gray is excerpted from a Washington Post story. My own comments follow each chevroned section:

GOP Mulls Retaliation for DeLay Suit

GOP makes silly little mewling threats they know they don't dare carry out.

Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post, May 6, 2000

House Republicans and groups with close ties to the GOP are considering a broad legal assault on the Democrats in retaliation for the racketeering lawsuit that Democrats filed against House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-TX) this week.

The move, which is attracting interest from DeLay and family values and gun rights groups, could expose both political parties to a lengthy and potentially bloody legal process. But several Republicans said in interviews this week they are eager to subject the Democratic Party's fundraising to the same kind of scrutiny Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Patrick J. Kennedy (D-RI) is seeking in his suit against DeLay.

Go right ahead, Tom. Do it!

There's only one problem: this little thing called "preponderance of evidence."

Any Klaymanesque idiot can file a suit, but in order for a lawsuit to be successfully pursued, there has to be SOME basis for it to be pursued.

That's why Larry Klayman's "lawsuits" never get beyond the filing stage. Klayman files these things not because he intends to win them, but as an excuse to do self-aggrandizing press conferences and, more importantly, mass mailings to his dupes telling them what a fine job he's doing of harassing Bill Clinton. The dupes, in turn, funnel money to Klayman, thus enabling Larry not to have to submit his resume to the Taco Bell night shift manager.

Now, not only do the Democrats intend to pursue this suit, and not only do they have a whole passel of DeLay's victims lined up and ready to testify, their GOP opponents and their major Religious-Racist-Gun-Right supporters are responding by massing together in the same sort of illegal, extortionate and terrorist coalition Kennedy's lawsuit is targeted against.

The Republicans just seem hell-bent on sticking the shivs in their own backs, don't they?

In a suit Wednesday, Kennedy alleged that Delay has put Democrats at a financial disadvantage by "extorting" money from contributors and then funneling donations through nonprofit groups that say they do not have to disclose donors' identities.

Ed Bethune, who is representing DeLay, said lawyers are combing the public record for accounts of questionable fundraising by Democrats. He emphasized that DeLay had not settled on a particular legal strategy,

...because there IS none that DeLay can pursue, not if he isn't suicidal....

but that under the "clean hands" doctrine Democrats could only claim they had suffered financially if they had not engaged in similar practices.

This is such bull. "Clean hands doctrine", my ass.

For one thing, the Dems don't engage in such practices, and Bethune knows it. It's the main reason why Dems have less money than the GOP.

For another, it plain doesn't make sense. It's like saying that if Person A rapes and murders Person B's grandmother, and Person B accidentally runs over Person A's cat, then Person A need not go to jail because he and B are both killers. Sorry, Bethune, but the law doesn't work that way, as you should know if you got your law degree from anywhere other than a Cracker Jack box.

Bethune made a bunch of other mewling threats, which I have left out for fair-use copyright reasons, but you can see them for yourself if you click on the link above.

Democrats said they would be undeterred by an legal counterattack, arguing that such a move would only buttress their case against DeLay.

"They operate fundamentally with the weapon of threats and attempted intimidation, and here's another round of threats," said Robert F. Bauer, counsel to the DCCC. "If they imagine we raise money the way they do, they're mistaken."

Translation: Please, oh PLEASE, Tom! Be an idiot and countersue! Give us more ammunition!

Officials of other GOP-affiliated groups, including the Traditional Values Coalition and Gun Owners of America, said they were also considering suing the Democrats if the case against Delay is allowed to proceed.

"We're going to fight fire with fire," said Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America. "If the First Amendment means nothing and these folks are going to play hardball, so be it."

Pratt said his group would consider targeting Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) for helping raise money for Handgun Control. The Rev. Lou Sheldon, who chairs the Traditional Values Coalition, said he has begun consulting his lawyers on whether he could sue Democrats for their ties to groups such as the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League.

You guys REALLY don't get it, do you?

The DCCC's suit involved not just illicit links between DeLay and various GOP stalwarts such as Sheldon (whose very words and actions as here limned are helping to prove the DCCC's case), but also the shaking-down of less-willing donors. That's why it's filed under the RICO law.

Heck, the only mistake the Dems made was to file this as a civil suit, not a criminal one. The only reason I can think for this is that under a criminal filing in their venue, they run an increased risk of drawing a Federalist Society member as a judge.

There was more mewling from Sheldon, which was inconsequential (except in that it tightens the RICO noose around his own neck by demonstrating how he and Delay are joined at the hip), which I have left out but which you can read at the link above.

Meanwhile, the actual lawyers on the GOP's side know better:

It is far from clear whether Republicans will actually pursue this strategy.

James Bopp Jr., counsel to Sheldon's group and two nonprofits named in the suit against DeLay, said he would advocate trying to have the suit dismissed instead.

"The lawyers are going to make a lot of money, but the organizations will all be damaged. That's not good for anybody," Bopp said. "But I can understand the human reaction of what's good for the goose is good for the gander."

Translation: Bopp is begging Tom not to stick his face in the wood chipper, because the resultant splatter will stick to all of Delay's associates, not to mention the rest of the Republican Party.

The upshot of all this, boys and girls, is that not only is Tom Delay cooked, but the GOP's entire crooked soft-money apparatus is about to come crashing down. The trial is going to be taking place right during the GOP's campaign season, and it just may cause some of the most legally vulnerable soft-money offenders to think twice about continuing in their wicked ways.

Yes, this will probably mean less money for Dems, too, in the long run, but I think that the Dems understand and welcome this, as a way of bringing about de facto campaign finance reform in ways that the poseur McCain never dreamed of attempting.

Go get 'em, DCCC!