Conservatives Without Conscience

after Cannon’s death. Cannon made the following observation:

It is true we engage in fierce combat, we are often intense partisans, sometimes we are unfair, not infrequently unjust, brutal at times, and yet I venture to say that, taken as a whole, the House is sound at heart; nowhere else will you find such a ready appreciation of merit and character, in few gatherings of equal size is there so little jealousy and envy. The House must be considerate of the feelings of its Members; there is a certain courtesy that has to be observed; a man may be voted a bore or shunned as a pest, and yet he must be accorded the rights to which he is entitled by virtue of being a representative of the people. On the other hand, a man may be universally popular, a good fellow, amusing and yet with these engaging qualities never get far. The men who have led the House, whose names have become a splendid tradition to their successors, have gained prominence not through luck or by mere accident. They have had ability, at least in some degree; but more than that, they have had character.

26.

Staff report, Economist, “Pyongyang on the Potomac? The Congressional Elections” (September 18, 2004) at http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm? story_id=3203239&tranMode=LA.

27.

Lou Dubose, “The Man with the Plan,” Texas Monthly (August 2004), 1.

28.

See Eddie Jackson et al. v. Rick Perry et al., brief for Appellants, in Supreme Court of the United States at http://www.jenner.com/files/tbl_s69News DocumentOrder/FileUpload500/517/Brief_for_Appellants_in_Jackson_v_ Perry.pdf.

29.

Spencer Overton, “Stealing Liberty: How Politicians Manipulate the Electorate,” The Crisis (January/February 2005), 15. The Crisis is an official publication of the NAACP.

30.

Dan Eggen, “Justice Staff Saw Texas Districting as Illegal; Voting Rights Finding on Map Pushed by DeLay Was Overruled,” Washington Post (December 2, 2005), A-1.

31.

Juliet Eilperin, “House GOP Practices Art of One-Vote Victories,” Washington Post (October 14, 2003), A-1.

32.

Dubose and Reid, The Hammer, 6.

33.

See Robert K. Murray, The Harding Era: Warren G. Harding and His Administration (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1969), 432–33. There is no evidence that President Harding had any involvement with the influence peddling and illegal sale of government property undertaken at the “little green house on K Street.”

34.

Jaun Williams, “The K Street Project and Jack Abramoff,” Morning Edition, National Public Radio (January 11, 2006) transcript.

35.

Jonathan E. Kaplan, “Boehner Can Rely on K Street Cabinet,” The Hill (October 6, 2005) at http://www.hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/100605/Boehner.html.

36.

William Norman Grigg, “Trouble with DeLay,” New American (October 31, 2005), 21.

37.

John B. Judis, “Razing McCain,” The American Prospect (March 13, 2000), 15.

38.

Dubose and Reid, The Hammer, 164–66.

39.

Sam Rosenfeld, “Then Came the Hammer,” The American Prospect (December 2004), 51.

40.

Jonathan Alter, “Tom DeLay’s House of Shame,” Newsweek (October 10, 2005) at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9557669/site/newsweek/.

41.

Story reported by the American Progress Action Fund (January 20, 2006) at http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=klL WJcP7H&b=1331575&ct=1799805.

42.