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Every day last week I received calls from reporters asking if I think House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) will survive the current crusade against him. My answer is always the same. Of course he will survive because you people have not laid a glove on him. They hate that answer. I never get quoted. I never am mentioned because I refuse to give the reporters the answer they seek. If I said conservatives have lost confidence in him my picture, in color, would be on the front page, or I would get top billing in a network newscast.

That is what happened to former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-GA). The media has hated Gingrich with a passion for years. Yet, because Gingrich was willing to speak about House Majority Leader Tom DeLay he was given top billing on CBS Evening News with Bob Schieffer. There has been bad blood between Gingrich and DeLay ever since then-House Majority Whip DeLay participated in an aborted coup to remove Gingrich from his position as Speaker of the House in 1997. If that background had been mentioned Gingrich's comments would have been perceived as payback for DeLay's effort to topple Gingrich.

While I receive calls about DeLay's standing in the conservative movement Majority Whip Representative Roy Blunt (R-MO), gets similar calls about DeLay's standing in the Republican Caucus. At this point the liberal Republican, Representative Chris Shays, of Connecticut, who nearly was defeated in the last election, is the only member of the House of Representatives to call for DeLay's resignation. No doubt this helps Shays in his congressional district, where so-called civil-unions legislation recently was enacted by the Connecticut Legislature and will be signed into law by Republican Governor M. Jodi Rell. DeLay, like any conservative, is disliked in Connecticut. Shays has played good politics for his constituents. No one else agrees that DeLay should resign. Yet the question is asked over and again.

Thus far nothing the anemic media "exposes" will cause the House Ethics Committee to issue any sort of citation. The problem for DeLay is that he cannot get cleared by the Committee because the Democratic Committee Members refuse to participate in the proceedings. Unlike other Republican-controlled House Committees, the Ethics Committee is comprised of an equal number of Republicans and Democrats. (Republicans control the U.S. House of Representatives by 232 to 202, with one so-called Independent, a Socialist who caucuses with the Democrats.) In order to act, a House member from the party whose member is questioned must "cross the aisle" to discuss the matter or the Committee remains deadlocked.

In the last Congress the Chairman of the Ethics Committee, Representative Joel Hefley (R-CO), joined the Democrats to warn DeLay that he was close to violating the House Ethics Rules. The Committee did not charge DeLay with a violation, it only warned him.

All Republican Committee Chairmen are term-limited by rules adopted by the U.S. House of Representatives in 1995. Hefley's term was up and he had to be replaced. But he objected by saying he was being replaced because he had the courage to join the Democrats who opposed DeLay.

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