GOP leaders display arrogance BY ROBERT NOVAK

‘We are looking more and more like the Democrats we replaced,” a House committee chairman told me Wednesday. That comment came before he learned, to his surprise and sorrow, that the House Republican leadership had removed Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey as chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee. The extraordinary purge buttressed the growing impression of arrogance as Republicans enter their second decade of power in the House.

[Two] disparate moves are united by a common purpose of making decisions from the top down. Smith was a chairman who did not take orders. The defeated spending reforms came from conservatives outside the leadership. …

[T]he new majority party resembles the old one in this sense: having long been in power, they act as though they are sure they will keep it forever. …

Majority Leader Tom DeLay and the other members of the Steering Committee wanted to purge Smith two years ago for defying the leadership on veterans spending, but Speaker J. Dennis Hastert saved him. This year, the pressure was so great that he was kicked off the committee. …

The new Appropriations Committee chairman, Rep. Jerry Lewis of California, is expected to be more attentive to the leaders than were his predecessors, whether or not he is a less open-handed spender. Smith’s fate suggests Lewis will be well-advised not to stray too far from what his leaders want.