Heads of the five Families
Ok, so one thing we’re going to have to work out over the course of this project is who are the heads of the families. Bruno can help me out with this and we’ll clarify as we go. We welcome suggestions along the way.
I like Bruno’s bit here on Delay as a Wartime Consigliere. But I think Delay’s more of a Don in his own right.
The way I see it, you’ve got Bush running the show on the executive end– that’s obviously a family in its own right. But Delay has got a separate, if interconnected thing going on in the House– he’s definitely the head of a family– he’s even got a catchy, Don-esque name, “the Hammer.” It’s like “the Chin” or “the Blade.” Then you’ve got Frist in the Senate– but he’s sort of castrated in a lot of ways, and there are “shadow dons” that are soaking up the power vacuum.
Delay, needless to say, is going down. It’s kind of like the last episode of Sopranos Season 5, “All Due Respect,” when Johnny Sac gets busted while Tony is over at his house.
Here’s how the scene is described on HBO’s website:
The two bosses embrace, restoring peace between the families - just in time for FBI agents to arrive. Johnny is chased down and arrested, but Tony escapes through the woods. A safe distance away, he phones his lawyer, Neil Mink, who tells him not to worry, it was a Brooklyn sting operation and Tony wasn’t named on the warrant. “Be of good cheer,” Neil advises. Then Tony hangs up and continues his long walk home.
W is Tony in this scenario– he’s obviously involved: His power was enhanced by Delay’s redistricting scam (it helped guarantee him a friendly House), which, in turn, was greatly benefitted by (if not wholly enabled by) Delay’s money laundering scam, which is the basis of Delay’s indictment and subsequent fall from power. So let’s say that Bush’s Escalade is parked in front of Delay’s house– but it’s not technically illegal for him to be parked there.
The parallels continue if you look deeper. At the moment when Johnny goes down, Tony becomes the most powerful boss in the region, New York included. Similarly, Bush is now the unchallenged over-boss of the Republican Party, since the only other relevant power center, Delay, is out of the picture. Granted, Bush’s power overall is dimished by the taint of scandal in the party, but Tony’s power would be analogously diminished by association with Johnny.
Do we need a don for the judicial branch? And is Abramoff a don in the lobbying sector? He’s certainly got the apparel for it.
But lobbying might be a different gig altogether– after all, lobbyists are about access to power, not power itself.
These questions and more to be answered here at Republicans or the Mafia…