Editorial: DeLay won’t win any congeniality contests

Saturday, Dec. 9, 2000 | 2:02 a.m.

House Majority Whip Tom DeLay has proven again that he prefers fighting to governing. At a meeting last week with reporters, DeLay, the third-highest ranking Republican, suggested Congress should play hardball with President Clinton over the budget. If there isn't a deal soon, DeLay said, Congress should make the president choose between accepting less money than he wants for agencies or shutting them down instead. "If he wants to shut down the government, that's his problem, not ours," DeLay said.

The timing of DeLay's threat was odd, considering that House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott were trying to forge a budget compromise with Clinton. The taunting of the president by DeLay, who represents the sentiments of many die-hard conservatives in the House, suggests comity may be a rare commodity next year in the evenly divided Congress.

Incredibly, DeLay is barking orders as if the Republicans captured both houses of Congress in a landslide. While the GOP retains a slim majority in the House, it did lose seats in the election, and the Senate now is split 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats. This hardly is a mandate for a Republican revolution. For the 107th Congress to accomplish anything in the next two years it is going to have to learn to get along -- and ignore the ranting of DeLay.