The current contest to replace Tom Delay as House Majority Leader has drawn a great deal of interest from our friends on the right side of the blogosphere. Blogs like RedState, Truth Laid Bear, and Instapundit have all spoken out in favor of John Shadegg over his rivals Roy Blunt (who is currently Majority Whip) and John Boehner.

It seems to me that there are two key qualities that House members and interested activists should look for in legislative leadership. The first is the ability to maintain discipline and order. The second is leadership’s commitment to core principles.

In the case of the first, Delay (with Blunt at his right hand) was well-known for maintaining iron discipline over his colleague. Through threats, cajoling and an unmatched fundraising operation (which is now the source of his grief), he was able to keep other members of the Republican conference in line when the chips were down. Indeed, perhaps Delay’s discipline was little too stern and constricting. But make no mistake, party discipline is critical, especially in the House. Without strong leadership, the operations of the whole body can break down, and only the minority Democrats benefit from such choas — through more chances to press their agenda and more opportunities to craft undesirable proposals with wayward Republicans.

But ever since Delay has departed the scene, Mr. Blunt has proven less and less capable of keeping the GOP conference together. Indeed, a number of news reports have said that Blunt inherited a thriving whip operation from Delay but has allowed it to wither.

In the case of adhering to core principles, it’s obvious to every conservative that the House leadership has drifted, especially in the area of federal spending. No can doubt that Mr. Blunt had a hand in the drift.

So who to choose? Can Mr. Shadegg maintain sufficient discipline to keep the House from coming completely unhinged? I have my doubts. Indeed, he has apparently made loosening discipline a cornerstone of his campaign.

What about Mr. Boehner? It’s unclear. But Mr. Boehner has his own problems. While the Abramoff scandal and his subsequent plea deal sealed Delay’s fate, it also taints most of the Republican leadership. And Mr. Boehner’s very close relationship with K Street raises serious public relations questions.

The bottom line: There is no perfect candidate. And in many ways, I’m afraid that Mr. Shadegg will not be the effective, principled leader that many of my friends are hoping he will be. Certainly Mr. Blunt is the wrong choice. (And the defensiveness exhibited by him and his staff underscores that conclusion.) Past that, any choice carries real risks — risks that could put the GOP House majority in jeopardy in the not so distant future.

JIM ADDS: Yup, the entire “campaign” for House Majority Leader in recent weeks has not been reassuring. The House GOP isn’t in a world-ending crisis, but it does have some majority-threatening problems; new leadership ought to be an opportunity to refresh and reinvigorate a legislative majority now in its second decade of rule.

Look, a lot of conservatives know we’re never going to get the size and cost of government reduced in the dramatic fashion we envision; but in recent years the House and Senate GOP have given off a vibe that they stopped trying a long time ago. I understand if Republican legislators no longer want to attempt the political suicide move of selling eliminating the Department of Education to soccer moms. But claiming you support limited government ought to entail some sort of effort at limiting it. Find some spending program that doesn’t have nationwide support, like mohair subsidies, and whack the hell out of it. Find a program that primarily benefits some never-going-to-elect-a-Republican state, like Massachusetts or Vermont, and attempt to de-fund it. Make the Democrats elected from those areas defend charging taxpayers nationwide for their local programs, and explain why they ought to be national priorities.

And of course, earmarks are the sort of thing that most voters for the class of 1994 hated; the explosion of them in recent years is a disgrace. As Instapundit pointed out, the political benefits are probably overestimated; it is beloved by those immediately involved with the specific project, but I think the average voter in a district is less thrilled than conventional wisdom would have us believe. If a Republican lawmaker can’t see how much this stuff bugs conservatives, he’s probably been surrounded by the “schmooze culture” of Washington too long.

The fact that Blunt and Boehner are the leading candidates, more or less men of the status quo, is not reassuring. The latest headaches of the congressional GOP - Abramoff, earmarks, runaway spending, pork, an agenda that rarely inspires - suggests that a lot of these guys have forgotten why they wanted to be elected.

Did these Republicans really get into politics in order to be managers of the status quo? I agree with the common line of their critics - they campaigned in 1994 to change Washington; ten years later, Washington has changed them.