House divided

GOP enforcer Tom DeLay and his former partner Dick Armey are locked in a nasty dispute over the future of the Republican Party.

By Mary Jacoby

May 24, 2004 | WASHINGTON -- When former House Republican Majority Leader Dick Armey's official portrait was unveiled at a reception in the Capitol's Statuary Hall last month, Speaker Dennis Hastert delivered a praiseworthy little speech, as did Armey's longtime policy nemesis, former House Democratic Leader Dick Gephardt of Missouri. "I was tickled with Dick Gephardt's generosity," Armey said in an interview with Salon. "He was very nice. He said he couldn't resist being there to hang me."

But one dignitary was conspicuously absent: House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. "I asked that he speak," Armey said. "Who'd be the most natural guy after the speaker? He is the guy that I came in with -- we were part of the celebrated 'Texas Six-Pack' of 1984. He is the most senior member of the House from Texas, and he is my successor. He was invited, and he declined."

Once good friends, the two Texas Republicans -- whose relationship was badly strained by the fallout from a botched 1997 coup attempt against then Speaker Newt Gingrich -- have now dropped all pretense of collegiality. Because they were leaders of the House GOP during its headiest days, their enmity is more than a personal drama; it is a metaphor for the troubled legacy, 10 years later, of the 1994 Republican "revolution" that brought them into power.

For the first time since the Eisenhower administration, Republicans control all of Washington, from the White House to both chambers of Congress. Yet the party of limited government has, under President Bush, instead presided over a massive expansion of government spending. New spending on defense and security was inevitable after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Armey conceded. But there is no justification, he said, for the budget-busting Medicare prescription drug program, the largest new entitlement since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, which will saddle the government with $8.1 trillion in unfunded liabilities over the next 75 years. Record deficits threaten the cherished Bush tax cuts, he added. Even the corporate-welfare farm subsidies that Armey, as a free-market conservative, had fought to kill are back. The moves all have one thing in common, he asserted: They are designed to secure votes.

"We're letting the political hacks overrule the policy wonks in this town," Armey lamented to me. Republican principles are being sacrificed in the pursuit of short-term political goals, he complained. And the irony, he added, is that all the maneuvering for votes may instead end up costing Republicans at the polls this year if disgusted fiscal conservatives simply stay home. A spokesman for DeLay declined to comment for this story.

Armey's stature as a former House leader lends his critique special weight. But most remarkable is that he is willing to make it at all. While many House conservatives say privately that they feel helpless in sticking up for their principles in the face of ruthless intimidation from the Bush White House and DeLay, few have dared to speak as boldly as Armey has. DeLay, who is known as "The Hammer" for his ability to pound Republicans into supporting the party line, doesn't just discourage dissent, he beats it to a pulp. And the "with us or against us" mentality, once directed only toward terrorists and Democrats, is increasingly targeting conservative dissenters as well.

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