Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Lights Out, Tom
Tom DeLay, after being indicted, after being removed from his leadership position in the House, still fought to retain his seat in the House (and his seat on the appropriations subcommittee in the House). After two of his former aides pled guilty to corruption charges, though, Tom DeLay was forced to step down, which he did officially yesterday.
I have written previously on the man Driftglass has called a “moral dumpster fire” of a human being. I won’t heap more scorn on the most corrupt member of the House in modern history. Hopefully the justice system will seal his fate. A grand jury in Texas has already indicted him on money laundering charges, and a federal indictment involving his connections to Jack Abramoff may be coming, especially now that his former staffers have turned over mounds of emails and other communications to prosecutors.
Today is a fitting time, however, to meditate once again on the House that Tom DeLay built, and I will tell you up front that Tom DeLay is not some “bad apple.” It’s generally a bad sign for a party when their “bad apple” is their leader in the House.
No, I don’t want republicans to squirm out of this one. Remember my three rules describing how conservatives abdicate responsibility for wrongdoing:
- Minimize the damage
- Throw a staffer (or a congressman) under the bus
- Business as usual
What republicans are going to say, if they ever admit DeLay was corrupt (like when he is convicted of some charge or another) is that he was a singular anomaly.
As I have written before, it is a curious “anomaly” when three GOP leaders are forced to resign their positions six years in congress (Gingrich in 1999, Lott in 2002, DeLay in 1995). DeLay’s fundraising machine was also run by Rick Santorum and Roy Blunt. Staffers from congressmen like Boehner benefited and participated. The K Street Project was maintained with the participation of dozens of GOP congressmen.
It doesn’t take Einstein to connect these dots.
Of course, before DeLay is indicted he will be defended by the republicans. Innocent until proven guilty, they’ll say. He’s done so much good, they’ll say.
Wasn’t it just a couple of days ago I posted my link to Thinkprogress about the 13 worst things DeLay has done? Need we go over the worst things he’s done? The three censures from the ethics committee that his own party controlled, the party that he controlled with an iron fist? Gerrymandering Texas twice in three years? Money laundering? Bribery? Tom DeLay promising sweatshop owners in Saipan that he would block reform efforts in congress aimed at the abuses in the factories?
Michael Medved said today that he “admires” Tom DeLay and that he wants to thank DeLay for everything he has done. I ceased taking Medved seriously a long time ago, but this may be the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard him say. I just can’t wait for Sean Hannity. Orifice has said in the past that the prosecution of DeLay is politically motivated, of course, just like the prosecutors were in the Iran-Contra Affair, of course, just like any prosecution of republicans. What do you expect from a guy who has Newt Gingrich and Ann Coulter as regular guests on his show? What do you expect from a guy who is good friends with Mark Levin, Oliver North, and Neal Boortz?
The tighter conservatives hitch their wagon to DeLay the uglier and uglier their position will be as the charges mount, as new evidence comes to light, as the convictions roll in for Tom DeLay (Jack Abramoff is a close friend of mine”) and the other corrupt members of DeLay’s fundraising machine. Tom DeLay is no longer the hammer. As of today, he is the nail.
It is in times like these that the true colors of radio commentators are revealed. Boortz and Medved can call themselves “libertarians” but if you have the gall to defend Tom DeLay at this point you are simply a cog in the GOP machine. If your judgment has been so co-opted by your political beliefs that you believe that Tom DeLay is admirable you simply have no judgment left.
Tom DeLay wasn’t hated for so many years because of his corruption. Moral corruption can be smoothed over with a charming exterior, though even if DeLay was charming he would still be disliked by every honest person in Washington.
No, Tom DeLay was really hated because he’s a snide, militant asshole. A partisan who made no effort to compromise. A politican who used every dirty trick in the book. He accused critics of the president of giving aid and comfort to terrorists, the definition of treason according to our founding fathers. When he was indicted he responded by attacking the prosecutor. Recently he maintained that he’s going to work to get his prosecutor removed from his job.
DeLay pioneered new ways of trying to take control of government. He was the first politician in living memory in Texas to gerrymander the state twice in three years. When democrats fled the state to try and prevent the legislature from having sufficient votes to ratify the redistricting he illegally used the FAA in Texas to try and track a plane that was carrying democrats out of the state.
He bristles at the public and the press frequently. When he was asked to leave a restaurant to smoke, as per federal law, he responded “I am the federal government.”
DeLay is hated because he’s a rabid dog of a politician who has no response to any issue other than attack. The prosecutor, Ronnie Earle, brought charges against three of DeLay’s associates before he brought charges against DeLay. When Earle brought charges against DeLay he was accused by DeLay of being “vindictive and partisan,” of being “an unabashed partisan zealot” and a “partisan fanatic,” engaging in “personal revenge.” The charges were a “sham” and an act of “political retribution.”
Let’s see that all together: "This act is the product of a coordinated, premeditated campaign of political retribution, the all-too-predictable result of a vengeful investigation led by a partisan fanatic," DeLay said of Earle.
That’s DeLay in a nutshell. Get indicted, call the prosecutor a “vengeful…partisan fanatic.”
For the record, Earle has prosecuted 12 democrats and 3 republicans in his time.
Pay attention to DeLay’s language in calling the accusations “a criminalization of conservative politics.” It sounds kind of like this, what conservatives said about Libby’s indictment. And this, what George H.W. Bush said about the Iran-Contra prosecutions when he said the Iran-Contra investigation was about a “criminalization of differences.”
No, George, the Iran-Contra Affair was about your administration funding and training terrorists. Scooter Libby’s case is about the Bush Administration leaking the identity of an undercover CIA agent to the press, and then Libby lying about whom he learned the information from and whom he told. Tom DeLay’s indictment is about DeLay laundering money into his Texas political action committee.
It’s stunning to me how these smarmy, dimwitted, would-be emperors haven’t come up with a new talking point in twenty years. Is there some kind of secret how-to book circulating among GOP politicians about what to do in the event of an indictment?
Tom DeLay’s legacy as House leader includes exploding the federal deficit, utilizing a vote roll call that lasted for two hours to coerce last-minute votes, Calling the EPA the “Gestapo of government,” saying that “a woman can’t take care of the family. It takes a man to provide structure,” saying that judges who don’t uphold the Constitution (in his judgment) “need to be intimidated,” saying that he and Dan Quayle couldn’t make it into the military in the Vietnam era because “So many minority youths had volunteered...that there was literally no room for patriotic folks like myself.”
After Columbine DeLay blamed the massacre on our education system and the teaching of evolution: “Our school systems teach our children that they are nothing but glorified apes who have evolutionized out of some primordial soup of mud, by teaching evolution as fact.”
Take a long, last look at Tom DeLay as he shambles off the stage of history. Like Newt Gingrich before him, Tom DeLay is leaving the House. My parting words to Mr. DeLay wouldn’t be quite as positive as Mr. Medved’s. Instead, I would say, as he leaves the House, what I hope the prison guard will say to him after his first day in jail.
Lights out, Tom.
P.S. For the Paula Zahns out there still looking for what the ideas of Democrats look like, take a look.
# posted by BitterHarvest @ 5:19 PM 
