Serendipitous Coincidence?

I can't help wondering at the timing of today's announcement by Travis County (Texas) District Attorney and flagrantly partisan Democrat hack Ronnie Earle that he has at last formally indicted (temporarily former) House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

As Powerline duly relayed, the Hammer issued the following statement:

These charges have no basis in the facts or the law. This is just another example of Ronnie Earle misusing his office for partisan vendettas. Despite the clearly political agenda of this prosecutor, Congressman DeLay has cooperated with officials throughout the entire process. Even in the last two weeks, Ronnie Earle himself had acknowledged publicly that Mr. DeLay was not a target of his investigation. However, as with many of Ronnie Earle's previous partisan investigations, Ronnie Earle refused to let the facts or the law get in the way of his partisan desire to indict a political foe.

This purely political investigation has been marked by illegal grand jury leaks, a fundraising speech by Ronnie Earle for Texas Democrats that inappropriately focused on the investigation, misuse of his office for partisan purposes, and extortion of money for Earle's pet projects from corporations in exchange for dismissing indictments he brought against them. Ronnie Earle's previous misuse of his office has resulted in failed prosecutions and we trust his partisan grandstanding will strike out again, as it should.

Ronnie Earle's 1994 indictment against Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison was quickly dismissed and his charges in the 1980s against former Attorney General Jim Mattox-another political foe of Earle-fell apart at trial.

We regret the people of Texas will once again have their taxpayer dollars wasted on Ronnie Earle's pursuit of headlines and political paybacks. Ronnie Earle began this investigation in 2002, after the Democrat Party lost the Texas state legislature to Republicans. For three years and through numerous grand juries, Ronnie Earle has tried to manufacture charges against Republicans involved in winning those elections using arcane statutes never before utilized in a case in the state. This indictment is nothing more than prosecutorial retribution by a partisan Democrat.

Indeed it is. And it is well-timed politically coming in the wake of DeLay's recent pro-spending stances that have drawn him a great deal of heat from the Republican base. Before the past couple of weeks DeLay could confidently count on solid backing from his own partisan lines. But now, with conservatives aghast at the Hammer's oblivious declaration of victory on spending control in the midst of more pork than a Porky Pig cloning convention, there will be those Pachyderms who sit back fratricidally and let Earlean nature take its course.

It again illustrates, in a bigger picture sense, that Democrats recognize current GOP vulnerabilities better than Republicans do themselves. The only way for the latter to avert having those vulnerabilities fatally exploited is to recoil from a bunker mentality and start listening to their core constituents, as the Democrats are theirs.

For 'Pubbies, that's a no-lose combination.

UPDATE: The AmSpec Prowler concurs:

[T]he DeLay indictment should...serve as a broader wake up call to the Republican leadership in both the House and the Senate, as well as their network of folks on K Street: It's time for Republicans to start putting their house in order.

A smart politician like DeLay should never have allowed himself to be in the position that he now finds himself. Five years ago, [he] would not have. But power and influence and a watering down of talent surrounding him on staff opened him and his organization up to missteps. There is a real sense among many conservatives that the Republican Party has achieved in little more than 10 years of power what Democrats created over 40 and which led to their demise in 1994.

Republicans will stand by DeLay and fight for him. They should, and they should fight hard. But look for conservative Republicans to take this opportunity to align the party with a more 1994 approach to governing. The question now is whether Hastert and company are up to the job.

UPDATE II: Here's a J-Pod preview of how the Left is going to spin the DeLay indictment:

Next couple of days there will be a lot of gleeful liberals and Republicans claiming that this really does make it possible for Dems to take over the House and Senate in 2006. Here's how it will work. Comparisons, immediately, to the indictment of powerful Democrat Dan Rostenkowski in 1994 adding to the sense that Democrats were out of touch with ordinary Americans and helping bring about the GOP landslide in November 1994. Corrupt Dems in 1994 = corrupt Repubs in 2005. Add to the DeLay indictiment the talk about Bill Frist's stock sale and you have major-league talking points for Democrats all over the country. People will say that as it was with Rosty and the Dems, so it will be with DeLay and the GOP. There will also be comparisons between Bush's problematic poll position in 2005 after Katrina and Clinton's troubles after the failure of health care in 1994.

I wouldn't be too fretful about the above in and of itself. The Democrats got massacred in 1994 because of the Clinton tax hike and the attempted Hillarycare putsch. Rostenkowski's fall and the "out of touch" stuff were the parsley garnish at best.

Where I worry is how this combines and metastasizes with the other detrimental GOP trends of the moment stemming from the Hurricane Katrina aftermath. With the Bush Administration having finally been broken by the Extreme Media and congressional Republicans already in a panicked frenzy to try and spend themselves out of trouble they were never really in (but which the press convinced them they were), both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue are in heap big trouble with a GOP base that is fed up with Republicans acting like Democrats, including the knee-jerk arrogance and condescension of the party leadership. Another ethics kerfuffle involving the very man who's been at the center of this intramural storm isn't going to reduce that festering disgruntlement.

Here's what I fear: the White House, fearful of Senate 'Pubbies cutting & running from a filibuster showdown with minority Democrats, goes the Souter route and appoints as obscure and anonymous a SCOTUS replacement of Justice O'Connor as it can find, and almost certainly a minority woman. Democrats, recognizing the selection as reflective of Bush's political weakness, make a show of Borking her but ultimately let her through. The Republican grassroots, expecting no less than "another Scalia or Thomas," erupts in full scale rebellion, creating an intra-party breach that is irreparable by any alternative gesture that the President or congressional GOP leaders could possibly offer, and which, of course, is not forthcoming anyway.

It becomes the Bush41 tax increase of the Bush43 presidency, Republicans get creamed in the '06 mid-terms, and Hillary Clinton's elevation to the White House two years later becomes a mere formality.

Yes, that's a worst-case scenario, and yes, I want to be optimistic, and yes, this Bush has a sound track record on judicial selections. But that was before he ran up the white flag to his enemies and accepted blame for post-Katrina "failures" that weren't his, and sacrificed his FEMA director as penance, and announced the Second Louisiana Purchase. This SCOTUS choice is being made in way too close proximity to that craven mindset, and that does not auger well for the dreams of a Justice Luttig, Justice Jones, Justice Garza, et al.

Sometimes historical turning points aren't recognized for what they are until long after the fact. And sometimes it isn't one turning point but a closely-packed cluster of them. September 2005 is beginning to look like the fulcrum marking the beginning of the end for Republican governance.

The resolution of Tom DeLay's fate, like Bill Frist's, will indeed "get ugly." But absent a significant course correction from the Pachyderms at the top, the true ugliness will be yet to come.

UPDATE III: You want ugly? It only took a few hours for the Left to start smearing Congressman David Dreier of California when he was rumored to be filling in for DeLay. And it turns out that the Hammer's guest host will be Roy Blunt of Missouri instead.

John, fell free to disregard Jim Geraghty's caveat....[h/t Michelle Malkin]