The Revolutionaries Have Become the Elites

Mark Steyn has it right once again in his column on the sad transformation of the Gingrich revolutionaries into the pampered elites:

Of all the many marvelous Ronald Reagan lines, this is my favorite: ''We are a nation that has a government -- not the other way around.''

[...]

Which current member of the Republican Party's creme de la creme could utter that Reagan line and mean it? Take the speaker of the House, J. Dennis Hastert. Last week, something very unusual happened: There was a story out of Washington that didn't reflect badly on the Republican Party's competence or self-discipline. It was about a Democrat! Fellow from Louisiana called William Jefferson. Corruption investigation. Don't worry, if you're too distracted by "American Idol," it's not hard to follow, you just need to know one little visual image: According to an FBI affidavit, this Democrat congressman was caught on video taking a hundred-grand bribe from a government informer and then storing it in his freezer. That's what the scandal's supposed to be: Democrat Icecapades of 2006. All the GOP had to do was keep out of the way and let Jefferson and his Dem defenders skate across the thin ice like Tonya Harding with her lumpy tights full of used twenties. It was a perfect story: No Republicans need be harmed in the making of this scandal.

So what does Hastert do? He and the House Republican leadership intervene in the case on behalf of the Democrat: They're strenuously objecting to the FBI having the appalling lese majeste to go to court, obtain a warrant and search Jefferson's office. In constitutional terms, they claim it violates the separation of powers. In political terms, they're climbing right into the Frigidaire with Jefferson's crisp chilled billfold. What does the Republican base's despair with Congress boil down to? That the Gingrich revolutionaries have turned into the pampered potentates of pre-1994 Washington, a remote insulated arrogant elite interested only in protecting the privileges of the permanent governing class. But how best to confirm it? Hmm. What about if we send the Republican speaker out to argue that congressmen are beyond the jurisdiction of U.S. law-enforcement agencies?

After all, the GOP's 1994 Contract with America stated pretty plainly that henceforth "all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply equally to the Congress."

But that was a long time ago, wasn't it?

Hastert did unbelievable damage to himself and the Republican cause with his silly hissy-fit over the documents seized from William Jefferson's (D-LA) office. The voters don't care much for elites - remember, they threw a bunch of them out of office in 1994, and the same could happen this year.