Notwithstanding allegations that attacks on House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's (R-TX) ethics are a conspiracy by “liberal media,” newspapers across the country that have previously endorsed President Bush have questioned DeLay's practices in editorials -- with some even calling on him to step down as majority leader.

The April 14 Columbus Dispatch (Columbus, Ohio):

DeLay has the skill and intelligence to maneuver himself politically away from ethics problems and toward the business of Congress, but he first would need an honest self-assessment that puts power in the perspective of the duties and ideals he swore to uphold.

If, instead, DeLay continues to shoot himself in the foot, he continues to wound his party.

The April 12 Staunton News-Leader (Staunton, Virgina):

Republicans have rallied around DeLay in the same loyal way that the Democrats circled their wagons around [former Democratic House Speaker Jim] Wright. If you can't count on your own party, who can you trust? But it is becoming rapidly clear that, in order to cut their losses and regain the moral high ground, DeLay must go. The dismantling of Republican rules about ethics -- one of the jewels in the somewhat-tarnished crown of the Republicans' politically brilliant “Contract with America” -- is not helping. That these rules were dismantled and their overseers replaced simply to ensure Tom DeLay's comfort zone only makes things worse.

Stepping down as majority leader will remove DeLay as a target. Restoring the luster of the ethics rulebook will help restore faith in Republicanism. If DeLay is able to adequately address his alleged offenses in the interim, who's to say he might not avoid the dustbin of history that now contains the husk of Jim Wright?

The April 12 Lincoln Journal Star (Lincoln, Nebraska):

It [sic] been heartening the past few days to hear a few Republicans finally voicing public criticism of Rep. Tom DeLay. More should join the chorus. It's time for Republicans to renounce his leadership and choose a more principled and temperate representative as House Majority Leader.

The April 9 Winston-Salem Journal (Winston-Salem, North Carolina):

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas is in ethical trouble up to his ears, so he's launched a common counterattack. He's blasting the messengers. DeLay, discovered to have used his political-action and campaign committees to pay his family more than $500,000 since 2001, and to have taken yet another questionably financed foreign trip, blasted both The New York Times and The Washington Post for liberal bias. OK, Mr. DeLay, even if the papers are liberal rags, as you contend, what about the money? What about the free trips? What about the three reprimands you received last year from the House Ethics Committee? Is it “liberal” to be worried that the second-most powerful member of the U.S. House is being bought by lobbying groups and is making family members rich through his PAC and campaign committees?

The April 8 San Antonio Express-News:

As disturbing as DeLay's mounting controversies are the responses of Republicans to them.

With each new allegation colleagues have remained steadfastly loyal to the man known as “The Hammer.”

This support sends a disturbing message to the voters: In defending DeLay, they align themselves with his alleged behavior.

The April 2 Dallas Morning News:

Once upon a time, Tom DeLay helped lead an insurrection that toppled a Democratic House regime grown fat and happy with power. What a difference a decade in power makes. Somehow, we doubt the Democrats will miss the opportunity to remind voters come 2006.

[...]

House Republicans should be asking themselves whether they really want to stake their careers defending the folly of a politician who, despite all he has done for the Republican cause, has forgotten where he came from.

The March 31 Omaha World-Herald (Omaha, Nebraska):

One of the first things the victorious Republican leadership did this year was to replace Republican committee members who had had a hand in the rebuking of DeLay.

Then the GOP adopted a rule on a straight party-line vote preventing the committee from investigating anyone.

DeLay's buddies even proposed a rule allowing the majority leader to keep that title if indicted in the Texas investigation. That clunker of an idea was buried under criticism and, one presumes, GOP embarrassment.

Despite wrongly claiming that the Travis County, Texas, district attorney who indicted three DeLay associates last year is a “partisan Democrat,” the Wall Street Journal wrote on March 28:

Whether Mr. DeLay violated the small print of House Ethics or campaign-finance rules is thus largely beside the point. His real fault lies in betraying the broader set of principles that brought him into office, and which, if he continues as before, sooner or later will sweep him out.

Finally, even while agreeing with DeLay supporters that the attacks on him “reek of partisanship,” on April 13 the Richmond Times-Dispatch (Richmond, Virginia) nonetheless on called on Republicans to strip DeLay of his leadership position:

Defenders of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay are right when they say Democratic attacks on The Hammer, as he is known, reek of partisanship. They also are right to say DeLay's ethical problems are not unique to him, or to the GOP.

Nevertheless, congressional Republicans would be wise to strip DeLay of his leadership position. Stories about ethical questions have become a drumbeat; the latest involve payments to DeLay's wife and daughter by his political and campaign committees, and a six-day junket to Moscow funded by lobbyists.

If the particulars do not breach the boundaries of House ethics rules, then they skirt right along the edge -- and blast through the walls erected by simple prudence. Arguing that the other side lacks a perfect record is no defense, and “Not Quite so Bad as They Are” is not much of a campaign slogan.

[...]

Republicans may grind their teeth at the state of affairs, but they have themselves to thank for it. Newt Gingrich perfected the art of destroying political opponents with charges of impropriety. Democrats learned from the master.

The GOP now faces a choice. It can admit that past assaults on Democrats were cynical exercises in political hardball that had nothing to do with a genuine concern for propriety. Or Republicans can resolve to uphold the standards they set. The latter course is the better and wiser one.

All but one of these newspapers endorsed President Bush in 2004. The Winston-Salem Journal declined to endorse either candidate, but noted that it had endorsed every Republican since Richard Nixon in 1968, including Bush in 2000, based “in part out of a belief that Republicans are more dedicated to fiscal and personal responsibility and trying to control the growth of government.”