DCCC to target NRCC Chair

Robert Novak has some good news and some bad news for the Republican party. First the good news: Jack Abramoff is telling friends that nothing he is revealing to federal prosecutors as a result of his plea agreement on fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy will implicate Tom DeLay. Alright, technically it's only good news for DeLay. Abramoff doesn't promise he won't sing about other members of the House, including Ohio congressman Robert Ney.

Now the bad news: There are reports the DCCC may be targeting the chair of the NRCC in the 2006 congressional elections:

Rep. Rahm Emanuel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign committee (DCCC), has taken the unusual step of targeting his Republican counterpart, Rep. Tom Reynolds, for defeat in his upstate New York district this year. There is no record of a House campaign committee chairman ever being defeated for re-election by the opposition party.

The DCCC claims secret polls showed the supposedly safe Republican district represented by Reynolds is competitive this year. Reynolds, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, in 2004 won re-election to a fourth term with a surprisingly low 56 percent. His Democratic opponent was retired industrialist Jack Davis, who spent $1,250,000 of his own money in 2004 and is trying again.

Where would the DCCC get the chutzpah to pull something like this? Whatever happened to bipartisanship in Congress? Why, this is unprecedented!

Of course, there was that little incident with Tom Daschle. You know, the Senate Minority Leader who was defeated by John Thune in November, 2004 after an unprecedented campaign where Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist broke tradition and actively campaigned against his counterpart. The result was the first race a senate majority or minority leader has lost in over 50 years. Daschle's crime, according to Frist, was that he was the chief obstructionist to President Bush's policies on tax cuts, judicial nominees and the war in Iraq. Of course, a lot of Democrats were scratching their heads about that one, seeing as how his tax cuts went through, not once but three times, his judicial nominees were appointed and the war in Iraq...well, don't even go there (no pun intended).

For an example of Senator Daschle's unpardonable crimes:

...he angered Republicans and unnerved a few Democrats when, with the nation on the brink of war with Iraq, he said he was "saddened that this president failed so miserably at diplomacy that we're now forced to war."

Daschle later said he regretted the timing of his criticism and expressed strong support for U.S. troops in Iraq.

Yes, it's painful to remember how successfully the Republicans were able to steamroll the Democrats in the early years of the Bush administration. But that's history now. If the November elections deliver a Democratic majority in the House, the Democrats are going to issue subpoenas faster than New Rome issues traffic tickets. Senator Frist, along with henchman Tom DeLay in the House, rewrote the rules of partisanship that are now coming back to haunt them. Too bad neither one of them will be around after the elections to reap their just rewards.