t the beginning of January, Representative Tom DeLay (R-TX) announced that he would not attempt to return to his post as House majority leader. After being indicted by a Texas grand jury on money-laundering charges, DeLay had initially said he was stepping down only temporarily. Apparently his simultaneous involvement in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal was too much even for the GOP to handle.

But the Republican Party soon made it clear that while it is cleaning up its aesthetics, it is not changing its behavior. First, the GOP announced that DeLay would still be a force within the party, naming him to replace the disgraced Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA) on the House Appropriations Committee. Cunningham had recently pled guilty to using his position on the powerful committee to solicit bribes—an admission that prompted many Republicans to feign outrage. Yet those same Republicans then replaced one indicted lawmaker with another.

The race is now on to replace DeLay as majority leader, and the top candidates are Representatives Roy Blunt of Missouri and John Boehner of Ohio—both DeLay clones in their own way. As the Wall Street Journal noted, "Neither [Mr. Boehner] nor Mr. Blunt represents a major break with a party establishment. Mr. Blunt is married to a corporate lobbyist; Mr. Boehner served as his party's liaison to the business lobbying community."

It goes further than that. Blunt "has paid roughly $88,000 in fees since 2003 to a consultant under indictment in Texas with DeLay," according to the Associated Press. Under DeLay's tutelage, Blunt has also become a master of using his position in the House to reward his son's lobbying clients.

The Washington Post reported in 2003 that "only hours after Rep. Roy Blunt was named to the House's third-highest leadership job," he tried "to quietly insert a provision benefiting Philip Morris USA into the 475-page bill creating a Department of Homeland Security." Blunt, the paper noted, "has received large campaign donations from Philip Morris, his son works for the company in Missouri and the House member has a close personal relationship with a Washington lobbyist for the firm." As the Post noted, he later married the Philip Morris lobbyist, even wrangling a waiver out of the House ethics committee to allow him not to report the couple's wedding gifts.

Like DeLay, Blunt has not been shy about bringing corporate lobbyists right into the heart of Republican policy-making. In fact, he has actually turned over some of his most important official duties directly to big business. For instance, the Washington Post reported in May 2005 that during the push for a round of massive new corporate tax cuts, "the task of rounding up the votes was delegated by Blunt's whip operation to a coalition of lobbyists, all of whom had clients with huge stakes in the outcome."

Boehner is the same kind of character, though he is perhaps more detestable because he publicly pretends to be Mr. Clean. In pitching his candidacy to Republican House members, Boehner claimed, "I cut my teeth here as a reformer. . . . So when it comes to institutional ethics and reform, I've got some experience." That is as laughable as Bill Clinton claiming to be a role model for marital fidelity. Boehner has not only voted against most major campaign-finance and ethics-reform proposals; his behavior is that of a corporate lobbyist dressed up in politician's clothing.

The New York Times's Bob Herbert reported in 1996 that on one recent day Boehner nonchalantly "took it upon himself to begin handing out money from tobacco lobbyists to certain of his colleagues on the House floor." The congressman "was not deterred by the fact that the House was in session [and] he was not constrained by any sense that passing money around the floor of the House of Representatives was a sacrilege. He had the checks and he dispensed them." The move was so brazen, one Republican lawmaker said that if Boehner's behavior "is not illegal, it should be." That same year, Boehner took the lead in appearing on Sunday news shows to claim that Newt Gingrich's confessed ethics violations were no big deal.