It can't be good for Tom DeLay that the president of the United States is allowing the White House spokesman to begin qualifying the friendship between the two powerful Texans. It's not good for Tom DeLay that Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, who was once upon a time something of a DeLay ideological clone, is saying that House majority leader has some explaining to do about the ethical issues that have enveloped him of late. And it has to be downright awful for Tom DeLay to have to go over to the other side of the Capitol to try to persuade Senate Republicans not to abandon him as he goes through whatever hell he has to endure.
But the worst of it for Tom DeLay must be his weekly “pen and pad” briefing, where he usually talks about the House schedule for the week and all the great things, large and small, that Republicans are doing for the country and the world.
This week, the line for the pen and pad began forming outside DeLay's Capitol office more than 45 minutes before the scheduled start. The first reporter in line was from the BBC, the third was from the Financial Times, and you have to guess that they weren't all that interested in the schedule. It may be too early to call it a deathwatch, but the long lines were not a result of the promised discussion about the repeal of the estate tax. The kind of attention that DeLay has attracted in recent days is some evidence that he has lost control of the story. His response this week, a refusal to discuss the ethics charges against him, is confirmation of that. Everything in his personal style and his political history tells us that DeLay would like to come out fighting, to blast away at the Democrats, the press, and other critics. He is good on the attack, and it has always been effective for him.
But this week, seemingly engulfed by the accusations, DeLay decided that it was time to go to ground just as former Speaker New Gingrich was publicly advising that DeLay was going to have to go public in a big way at some point in time. “I know that the left and the Democrats and some in the media would rather have me addressing other matters," DeLay said Wednesday. For answers to ethics questions, “I would direct them to my press staff,” he offered.
DeLay's position is that he is the victim of a Democratic crusade to get him, and he is not going to play into that trap. “I'm not here to discuss the Democrats' agenda,” he said in various and repeated ways. But it is hard to tame a tornado once it gets up and moving, although DeLay is trying. Frankly, there is a whiff of desperation to the effort. While he won't answer questions at his briefings, his allies are pleading his case far and wide, even on the floor of the House.
Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina on Tuesday night praised the job that DeLay had done both in Washington and in Texas, from cutting taxes to reducing welfare: “Additionally, Majority Leader DeLay and his wife, Christine, play a valuable role in their home community,” Wilson said. “As foster parents, they have devoted themselves to improving the lives of abused and neglected children … . Their work is a true sign of compassion that is rarely recognized.”
Another compassionate conservative from Texas!
Wilson also echoes DeLay's recent contention that the attacks against the majority leader are a left-wing effort to derail the conservative movement. “His critics are inspired by bitterness, hatred, and partisanship,” Wilson said, “and their smears will fail as they failed against Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, and John Ashcroft.” I'm sure DeLay is proud to be placed in that company, but I just can't hear the White House saying about the president's friendship with Rice or Cheney what White House spokesman Scott McClellan said this week of DeLay: "I think there are different levels of friendship with anybody."
If DeLay is right about one thing, it's that he is on the Democrats' agenda. After having tormented them for years, he has in recent weeks turned into the gift that keeps on giving. Democrats on the Hill have lately settled on a strategy of accusing the Republicans of extremism, overreaching, and abuse of power and the public trust; Tom DeLay is their poster child, especially in the wake of the Terri Schiavo affair. A recent Gallup/USA Today/CNN poll showed that a majority of Americans believe that on moral values issues, the GOP is using its power in the federal government to “interfere with the private lives of most Americans.''
With DeLay, Democrats now feel that they have a face to slap. “This is not just Tom DeLay's behavior,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, “but the standards of the Republican caucus and how low those standards are.”
And in case you have any doubt about how nasty it is about to get on the Hill, don't forget the House Republican campaign committee's response: suggestions that Pelosi, Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid are guilty of some of the same things alleged against DeLay.
Let's party!
Terence Samuel is the chief congressional correspondent for U.S. News & World Report. His column about politics appears each week in the Prospect's online edition.
