Sept. 29 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. House Republicans chose continuity over change in selecting Roy Blunt, a long-time lieutenant to Majority Leader Tom DeLay, to step into Delay's role after a Texas indictment forced him out of his post.

Blunt, 55, the No.3 House Republican, won the support of the party's 231-member caucus after social-conservative groups rebelled over House Speaker Dennis Hastert's initial plan to replace DeLay with Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier, who has a less conservative voting record.

Republican lawmakers said they rallied around Blunt, a one- time university president who became a top fund-raiser, in part to ensure stability. ``This is very similar to a battlefield situation where a leader has been wounded and taken out of battle,'' Representative Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican, said in an interview. The party decided to ``stick with the chain of command,'' he said.

Blunt and his leadership colleagues signaled that they don't plan major changes in their legislative agenda, including extending expiring tax cuts, spending money on reconstruction after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and seeking spending reductions in entitlement programs such as Medicaid, which provides health-care to poor people. ``The ideas are bigger than we are,'' Blunt said in a Washington press conference.

The question the transition from DeLay to Blunt raises is ``what this will do to the Republicans maintaining discipline within their congressional caucus, which is something DeLay was extremely good at,'' said David Gergen, a professor at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ``He's run a very strong Republican organization, and has been highly effective at that.''

`The Hammer'

Delay, a member of the party's leadership since 1992, is nicknamed ``the Hammer.'' Blunt's ``very gentle'' personal style is different, said Representative John Mica of Florida.

Jo Maney, a spokeswoman for Dreier, said that House Republican leaders had initially centered on Dreier as the temporary majority leader. ``They eventually came to another plan,'' she said.

A Republican leadership aide said that conservative groups, reacting to news reports that Dreier was the choice, called congressional offices to protest that he wasn't conservative enough. Dreier took the conservative position on an average of 61 percent of the votes on social, economic and foreign issues during 2004, while Blunt averaged an 80 percent conservative voting record, according the National Journal, a Washington- based magazine.

Stepping Aside

DeLay was required by party rules to step aside following his indictment by a Texas grand jury for criminal conspiracy in connection with illegal corporate donations that helped Republicans take over the state legislature. A House Republican caucus rule requires party leaders to step aside if indicted on a felony charge carrying a prison term of two or more years.

DeLay has been the most effective House leader since Speaker Joseph Cannon, who served from 1903 to 1911, said James Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University in Washington.

``It's like Tito leaving Yugoslavia,'' Thurber said. ``He ruled with fear, and so did Tom DeLay. Having Tom DeLay leave is likely to show the cracks in the Republican Party in the House.''

Closing Ranks

In rallying behind Blunt, Republicans are closing ranks as their party comes under attack by Democrats for alleged ethical scandals. DeLay was admonished three times last year by the House ethics committee for violations and is anticipating a new probe into overseas trips he took with lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who was indicted on fraud charges in August.

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department over the sale of his stock in HCA Inc. in June, a month before the company said its quarterly profit would miss analyst estimates.

``I don't think there is any question but that the indictment of Tom Delay gives another boost to the Democrats in terms of their argument that the GOP leadership doesn't pay attention to ethics requirements,'' said Leon Panetta, a former Democratic congressman from California who served as White House chief of staff under Democratic President Bill Clinton.

Republicans' Risk

Amy Walter, House editor for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report in Washington, said Republicans risk the same election setbacks that Democrats suffered when they lost House and Senate majorities in 1994 after ethics scandals involving alleged misuse of franked mail and the House bank.

``It's setting up the narrative that Democrats are looking to play in 2006 that we need change, we need to throw out this leadership, we need a change in Congress,'' Walter said.

Representative Zach Wamp, a Tennessee Republican, said his party ``will have to fight like heck to maintain the majority'' in the 2006 elections. Still, he said, there is time to redirect public attention to the Republican agenda.

``If the election were in a week we'd be in trouble, but it's 13 months away,'' he said.

House Republicans yesterday approved a plan that temporarily gives Blunt the duties of the majority leader. His chief deputy whip, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, will be the top vote-counter among House Republicans. Dreier will take over a key facet of DeLay's old job: meeting with committee chairmen to discuss strategy and timing for bringing legislation up for votes.

Rapid Rise

Blunt, the son of a state representative, served as president of Southwest Baptist University in Missouri after an unsuccessful Missouri gubernatorial bid in 1992. He won election to the House in 1996, and within three years was chief deputy whip under DeLay.

As majority whip, Blunt was responsible for vote counting and pushing Republican-backed legislation though the House. In July he helped lobby lawmakers to pass the Central American Free Trade Agreement, which was approved by a 217-215 vote.

DeLay's leadership political-action committee, Americans for a Republican Majority, has given $260,701 to candidates since the 2004 election. In the previous four years, the group gave more than $2 million to fellow politicians, according to PoliticalMoneyLine, a Washington company that tracks campaign finance.

Blunt's committee, the Rely on Your Beliefs Fund, has contributed $269,217 to candidates for the current two-year election cycle. For the 2002 and 2004 elections, it gave more than $1.3 million.

Blunt also has had his ethics called into question. The Washington Post reported in 2003 that Blunt tried to insert into a homeland security measure a provision benefiting Altria Group Inc.'s Philip Morris unit. At the time, Blunt was dating a lobbyist with the company. A top aide to Hastert stripped the provision out, the Post reported.

To contact the reporters on this story: Laura Litvan in Washington at llitvan@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: September 29, 2005 00:02 EDT