The first lesson of Politics 101: When in trouble, look to your base. That’s what House Speaker Dennis J. Hastert is apparently doing, in his recent push to make sure the lighted tree put up in December on the U.S. Capitol be returned to its name of the last decade, the “Capitol Christmas Tree.” Its name had been the stunningly interesting and descriptive “Holiday Tree.”

You can expect any court cases involved over so-called “Christmas” trees to find the primarily secular and cultural signification of the “Christmas tree,” and likely validating their use by civil authorities. But in the meantime, the conservative religious base in the Republican party has another public symbol to rally around.

But in the case of the Capitol tree, I have to wonder if this is a kind of political posturing in part aimed at diverting attention from the behavior of federal lawmakers. This is the “trouble” I was referring to: burgeoning corruption, especially bribery, scandals within the Beltline.

Republicans have held control of both chambers of our bicameral legislature for a decade now, having taken over both the House and the Senate in 1995. Of course, the most recent charges have focused on the leadership of the majority party, but Democratic party leaders are not immune.

In any case, its quite clear how far the Republican agenda e from the initial days of their majority standing, with the Newt Gingrich-led Contract with America, that pledged to “end the cycle of scandal and disgrace.” Beyond the shift from a Congress that shut down the government over a balanced budget to one that has overseen explosion of federal spending and deficits, we’ve seen a move to politics as usual, quid pro quo, evidence that “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

It’s likely, too, that Speaker Hastert’s attention to the “Holiday Tree” is similarly politics as usual.