WP op-ed: DeLay Exits, Stage (Hard) Right

[DeepModem Mom]

DeLay Exits, Stage (Hard) Right
By Ruth Marcus
Monday, June 12, 2006; Page A21

No one who's seen Tom DeLay operate over the years could have expected the Texas Republican to go gently: The Hammer always comes down hard. But DeLay's farewell address on the House floor last week was nonetheless stunning for its sneering, belligerent partisanship.

This was not the case of a politician who happened to hit a jarring note at just the wrong time. DeLay made clear that he wanted to leave the way he behaved throughout his 22 years in Washington -- contemptuous of the opposition and unrepentant about his cutthroat tactics....

***

DeLay's money-laundering indictment in Texas arises from his efforts to evade the state's ban on corporate contributions to political campaigns. DeLay and his aides routed the money through Washington, desperate to forge a GOP statehouse majority that would let them redraw the state's congressional districts and cement Republican control of the House. I've had my doubts about whether this should be a criminal prosecution, but the episode illustrates DeLay's relentlessness in the pursuit of political goals.

And this is the core of DeLay's damaging legacy. He dismantled the barriers between the Capitol and K Street, inviting friendly lobbyists -- and he kept a list, literally, of who had given enough to make the grade -- to write legislation. DeLay's pay-to-play House worshipped campaign cash (a committee chairmanship did not come cheap) and stifled dissent, from inside the party or out.

As he addressed his colleagues for the final time, DeLay betrayed no doubt that his tactics had ever edged even slightly across the line, no hint of recognition of the poisonous consequences of GOP authoritarianism under his sway....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/11/AR2006061100763.html

[Botany]

1. He was and still is proud of the thuggish nature of the crime family he ..

..... was a part of.

1/6/05 "What do these conspiracy folks think? That Karl Rove sat in the White House basement
with a couple of computers and flipped votes on election night?"

He said that on the House floor in response to John Conyers' report on Ohio and some
people standing up against bush's 2004 victory.

thanx for telling us Tommy

[cagoldensun5050]

2. typical neocon

[Skink]

3. He now becomes Super Lobbyist....

Able to control Congress in a single bound.:bounce:

[MADem]

4. Holy Mother of Pearl, that is a scathing piece!!!!!!

...I hadn't planned to write about DeLay's departure. He's under indictment in Texas and out of power in Washington; it seemed gratuitous to kick the man on his way out. But DeLay's speech cries out for, if nothing else, a review of the ethical and political wreckage left behind.

Lobbyist Jack Abramoff -- "one of my closest and dearest friends," as DeLay once described him -- was one of the chief financiers of DeLay Inc., trading on his access to DeLay and his office to make millions. DeLay's former communications director Michael Scanlon has pleaded guilty to conspiring to bribe public officials when he left the Hill to work with Abramoff. DeLay's former deputy chief of staff Tony Rudy admitted taking bribes while working for the Texan -- not only the usual grubby gift bag of skybox seats and golfing trips but also $86,000 in payments funneled to his wife's consulting company.

Edwin A. Buckham, DeLay's former chief of staff, surfaces in the court papers as "Lobbyist B," who steered money to the Rudys. (Buckham also put DeLay's wife, Christine, on his payroll, for a total of about $115,000.) Another DeLay chief of staff, Susan Hirschmann, topped a recent list of congressional staffers scooping up free trips; she and her husband accepted $84,000 in freebie travel in a mere 26 months.

DeLay's reaction to all this has been to assert ignorance of the corruption swirling around him. But this behavior was the predictable result of the scorn for the ordinary norms of politics that was DeLay's modus operandi. As his former communications director John Feehery wrote in The Post's Outlook section, "People like Rudy and Scanlon pleased DeLay because they were always pushing the envelope."

These are people who behaved contemptibly in government because they have such contempt for government....

[Skittles]

5. he is a slimy, disgusting piece of garbage

good riddance