I for one am glad to see Tom DeLay do his best to get back into the public eye.
DeLay — the most powerful Republican on Capitol Hill four years ago when the party gathered in New York to re-nominate fellow Texan George W. Bush — is now a private citizen. He’s still a devoted Republican and committed conservative, but the once-feared lawmaker is now on the outside looking in.
“I haven’t been found guilty of anything, and yet my first name is ‘Discredited’ in the media,” DeLay said Wednesday.
The former congressman from Sugar Land strongly denies that he did anything wrong and says he has faced “11 years of frivolous charges.” But he acknowledges he was blind to wrongdoing by friends and aides who have been convicted of crimes.
“I have regrets that I didn’t see it going on,” he said.
DeLay aggressively defends the GOP’s conservative record during his time at the helm, arguing that “we get no credit for that.” But he acknowledges that 2006 “was a disaster, and we started imploding.”
Forced to give up his House leadership position after being indicted by an Austin grand jury, DeLay is working his way back into the public spotlight. He’s appeared as a TV analyst, newspaper columnist and conservative blogger.
He’s building a group known as Coalition for a Conservative Majority, which he describes as an “action tank” (not to be confused with a think tank) dedicated to erasing what he sees as the Left’s current edge in political organization.
DeLay warns that the Left, using the Internet and text-messaging tools, has assembled the “most powerful political coalition that has ever been built” over the past seven years. “We have nothing that looks like MoveOn.org.”
[…]
For DeLay, the road to redemption leads through St. Paul, where his home-state delegates offer him unqualified support and his former colleagues offer him thanks — at least for his role in bringing the GOP to power on Capitol Hill.
“People admire and respect all the great things he’s done over the past 20 years,” said Harris County Republican Chairman Jared R. Woodfill V. “He’s one of the architects of the Republican revolution in Texas.”
It’s like an episode of Behind the Music. The humble beginnings. The meteoric rise. The fall from grace. The dogged comeback attempt. Add in Jim Forbes and some commentary from the likes of Mo Rocca and it’s ready to air on VH1. All I can say is that if Tom DeLay wants to become a public face of the GOP again, I say bring it on.
No one really understood his resigning. Most assume it was because of a possible threat of indictment if he didn’t but the Justice Department really doesn’t work that way.
Personally I think it was a matter of his no longer being able to “wheel and deal” under the table because of a real threat that the next time he got caught he would be indicted. And federal indictments are not so easy to deal with as state indictments obviously are. Since he apparently doesn’t know how to “wheel and deal” any other way, he could no longer function in Congress and so he resigned and blamed the “left-wing conspiracy” and has been doing quite well with it ever since. He is no longer required to file disclosures but you can make bet he has made hay with his new career. A lot of hay.
The one thing Tom De Lay really likes is money.
Regardless of who wins what in November, I suspect you are going to see the Republican Party begin to become more moderate. And avoid the Texas Republicans like the plague.
“Corrupt and Proud of It” may still play well in Austin but it doesn’t play well anywhere else. We’ve gone from the “kinder, gentler” world of George HW Bush to the “meaner, nastier” world of George W Bush. The Republican Party is going to have to get back to the “kinder, gentler” world if it is going to survive.
And in that world, Tom De Lay simply will no longer have any influence. I’m not sure he really does except among some die-hards who will continue to support him the way some continued to support Jerry Falwell.
As with the “moral majority” the “conservative majority” really isn’t.
Uh, Republicans just nominated one of the the most extreme right wingers in their party, someone who could quite possibly become president in the near future. So what is this business of them becoming more moderate? Conservatives may not be the majority, but they darned sure are in control. To me this seems a distinction absent a difference.