Mr. DELAY. Mr. Speaker, I rise to
claim the remainder of the time.


The SPEAKER. In the tradition of
the House, the gentleman from Texas
is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. DELAY. Mr. Speaker, what is happening here today is amazing but not surprising. Mr. Speaker, what we are witnessing here today is a shame. A shame. The issues at stake in this petition are gravely, gravely serious. This is not just having a debate. But the specific charges, as any objective observer must acknowledge, are not.

That is because the purpose of this petition is not justice but noise.

It is a warning to Democrats across the country, now in the midst of soul searching after their historic losses in November, not to moderate their party’s message.

It is just the second day of the 109th Congress and the first chance of the Democrat congressional leadership to show the American people what they have learned since President Bush’s historic reelection, and they can show that, but they have turned to what might be called the ‘‘X-Files Wing’’ of the Democrat Party to make their first
impression.

Rather than substantive debate, Democrat leaders are still adhering to a failed strategy of spite, obstruction, and conspiracy theories. They accuse the President, who we are told is apparently a closet computer nerd, of personally overseeing the development of vote-stealing software.

We are told, without any evidence, that unknown Republican agents stole the Ohio election and that its electoral votes should be awarded to the winner of an exit poll instead.

Many observers will discard today’s petition as a partisan waste of time, but it is much worse than that. It is an assault against the institutions of our representative democracy. It is a threat to the very ideals it ostensibly defends. No one is served by this petition, not in the long run. And in the short term, its only beneficiaries are its proponents themselves.

Democrats around the country have asked since Election Day, and will no doubt ask again today, how it came to this. The Democrat Party, the party that was once an idealistic, forward- looking, policy colossus. The New Deal, the Marshall Plan, the Great Society, the space program, civil rights. And yet today one is hard pressed to find a single positive substantive idea coming from the left.

Instead, the Democrats have replaced statecraft with stagecraft, substance with style, and not a very fashionable style at that. The petitioners claim that they act on behalf of disenfranchised voters, but no such voter disenfranchisement occurred in this election of 2004 and for that matter the election of 2000.

Everybody knows it. The voters know it, the candidates know it, the courts know it, and the evidence proves it.

We are not here to debate evidence, but to act our roles in some scripted, insincere morality play.

Now, just remember: pre-election memos revealed that Democrat campaign operatives around the country were encouraged by their high command in Washington to charge voter fraud and intimidation regardless of whether any of it occurred.

Remember,neither of the Democrat candidates supposedly robbed in Ohio endorse this petition. It is a crime against the dignity of American democracy, and that crime is not victimless.

The Democrat leadership came down to the floor and said this is a good debate;we ought to be having a debate on this issue.

This is not a normal debate. This is a direct attack to undermine our democracy by using a procedure to undermine the constitutional election that was just held.

If, as now appears likely, Democrats cry fraud and corruption every election regardless of the evidence, what will happen when one day voters are routinely intimidated, rights are denied, or, God forbid, an election is robbed?

What will happen? What will happen when, God forbid, this quadrennial crying wolf so poisons our democratic processes that a similarly frivolous petition in a close election in the future is actually successful, and the American people are denied their constitutional right to choose their own President?

Mr. Speaker, Democrats must find a way to rise above this self-destructive and, yes, plain destructive theory of politics for its own sake. A dangerous precedent is being set here today, and it needs to be curbed, because Democrat leaders are not just hurting themselves.

By their irresponsible tactics, they hurt the House, they hurt the Nation, and they hurt rank-and-file Democrats at kitchen tables all around this country.

The American people, and their ancestors who invented our miraculous system of government, deserve better than this. This petition is beneath us, Mr. Speaker; but, more importantly, it is beneath the men and women that we serve.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues, both Democrat and Republican, to do the right thing. Vote ‘‘no,’’ and let us get back to the real work that the American people hired us to do.