The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette’s Sylvia Smith has a Question and Answer with Mark Souder about the past year.
Ms. Smith started the article like this:
Eleven years ago this month, Mark Souder was packing his bags to head back to Washington, but this time as one of 435 elected House members instead of as an aide. It was a heady time for Republicans, who had won enough seats in the 1994 elections to hold the House majority for the first time in 40 years. Souder’s defeat of a three-term Democratic incumbent helped create that majority.
That introduction made me think the first question would be about Rep. Souder’s 1994 campaign promise to serve only 12 years. But, no such question was written about in the article.
I was surprised to see that he seems prepared to throw some Republicans under the train in the wake of corruption revelations. He thinks that DeLay may get off on the money laundering charge in Texas and thereby look better when real corruption charges surface in connection with lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Souder also doesn’t try to mount any kind of defense for Ohio Republican Bob Ney.
Rep. Souder also expresses potential uneasiness about Bush’s warantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens.
I should be clear, he doesn’t come out and say that DeLay or Ney or Bush have actually done anything wrong, but he seems to be positioning himself in such a way that he can create distance if any of those scandals really explode.
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