The Rise (Again) of the Machine

Every few decades, a set of political operatives discover the use of the "Machine", a set of money and patronage incentives to build a political monopoly. Historically, both democrats and republicans have done this, they build and keep a majority for a period of time, corruption scandles occur, reforms are passed the machine goes away and is reinvented a few years later when the heat has dies down. It seems to be a nautral, emergent property of political systems.

In that light, there is an interesting look at the DeLay Machine over at TPM.

One of the great questions of the last decade is how congressional Republicans managed to maintain such unprecedented party discipline. The standard answer is that that's how Tom DeLay earned his nickname 'The Hammer', by squashing anyone who threatened to get out of line. Only that's not really quite how the House GOP Caucus functioned. Notwithstanding the reputation DeLay liked to cultivate, he worked a lot more with Carrots than Sticks. And that means money. Lots and lots and lots of money. A lot of it unaccountable money; a lot of it 'don't ask where it came from' money; but lots and lots of money, and as long as you were there with the caucus on the important votes, a lot of it would be yours.