Tannishblog

This guy’s got more balls than Buckminster Fuller.

I would quip that Tom DeLay is Satan, but Lucifer would be too smart to get caught; Tom obviously is not. I have no doubt, however, that Tom DeLay is evil. He’s becoming this nation’s icon of political underhandedness, intimidation and character assassination. He wins by playing dirty, and I’m sure in his crusty, black shriveled heart, he revels in it.

According to WaPo, he’s treating his legal defense as yet another campaign. Read that to mean he’s plying a multi-tiered strategy to raise funds, destroy the character (perhaps even the career) of his competition, and appeal to his staunchest supporters to help spread the manure. To Wit:

Other politicians caught in a legal bind have tried to make a similar case that they were victims of prosecutorial excess or partisan attack. But few have done it to the degree of DeLay and his allies, who have launched an aggressive campaign to portray the former House majority leader as both a victim of a vendetta and an irreplaceable champion of conservatism.

Right. Let that settle a bit: Tom De-freaking-Lay is a victim. “I was just minding my own business, when…” If this whole drama didn’t threaten to undermine our republic, I would laugh; but it’s too serious a matter. What kind of Dawn of the Dead republicans are still able to swallow that crap?

By so doing, DeLay’s team hopes to accomplish three critical goals: undermine the stature of his Democratic prosecutor, Ronnie Earle, in the minds of potential Texas jurors; win over DeLay’s suburban Houston constituents before a potentially difficult reelection campaign; and retain his political base in Washington before a planned return to power.

Power: It’s that last word that motivates him. While he holds out his cup to some of the nation’s richest sociopaths, whining all the time about how downtrodden he is, both of the knives up his sleeves are slick with gore. His constituents, bowlegged and unwashed, gun-toting beer-spillers, are all too involved in bar fights to bother thinking about the issues. To them, anyone nicknamed “The Hammer” has got to be macho enough to support.

The official line is the charges against DeLay are “egregious” (meaning offensive for those DeLay constituents), but somehow the concepts of money-laundering and conspiracy, illegally funneling corporate money into a public campaign are not seen as offensive. Forgive my tender sensibilities, but allowing big business to purchase a senate majority is quite “egregious” to me. This is not “of the people” democracy in action.

To take a play from the Texan book of Western Justice, I say we find a very tall, strong tree and hang the bastard, let him swing there until the buzzard are fed. Apologies to those who find this offensive.