That's right, Bug Man. It's just a vast left wing conspiracy.

Overview

Rather than respond in a substantive way to the allegations (and facts) raised about him, The Bug Man has instead claimed that there is a vast left wing conspiracy out to get him. On March 18, 2005, DeLay gave a speech to the Family Research Council, in which he said the following:

This is exactly the issue that’s going on in America, of attacks against the conservative movement, against me and against many others. The point is, the other side has figured out how to win and defeat the conservative movement, and that is to go after people personally, charge them with frivolous charges, link that up with all these do-gooder organizations funded by George Soros, and then get the national media on their side. That whole syndicate that they have going on right now is for one purpose and one purpose only, and that’s to destroy the conservative movement. It’s to destroy conservative leaders, not just in elected office but leading.

(emphasis added). And when the story broke on how his political organizations had paid $500,000 to his wife and daughter over four years, DeLay's response (as reported by CNN) was "[I]t's just another seedy attempt by the liberal media to embarrass me."

Poor Bug Man. Those mean old liberals are picking on him. Aww...does Tommy need his mommy?

The problem for The Bug Man is that there are plenty of right wing voices criticizing him as well. Let's look at a few, shall we?

Bill O'Reilly

According to this report from Media Matters for America, during his April 6, 2005, radio show, O'Reilly said the following:

All right, how about this Tom DeLay? Paying his wife and daughter $500,000? Wow! What a guy! Congressman from Texas. Very powerful in the House of Representatives, obviously. Got some 'splainin' to do, Tom. ... you Republicans out there, you guys gotta obey the rules. And dancing around the rules, just because you didn't break 'em -- still, a half-million dollars to your wife and daughter -- since 2001 is it? Whoa! So anyway, not a good day for Tom DeLay -- that rhymes. Now, I can't understand guys like DeLay who want to exploit the system.

The Wall Street Journal

On March 28, 2005, the Wall Street Journal editorial board was not exactly supportive of The Bug Man. Regarding the allegations against DeLay, the WSJ said,

In Beltway-speak, what this means is that Mr. DeLay has an "odor": nothing too incriminating, nothing actually criminal, just an unsavory whiff that could have GOP loyalists reaching for the political Glade if it gets any worse.

The Beltway wisdom is right. Mr. DeLay does have odor issues. Increasingly, he smells just like the Beltway itself.

Oh, but wait...there is more. The editorial addressed the three trips that are a big part of the charges against DeLay. Keep in mind that Abramoff (see the previous post) was part of all these trips.

Taken separately, and on present evidence, none of the latest charges directly touch Mr. DeLay; at worst, they paint a picture of a man who makes enemies by playing political hardball and loses admirers by resorting to politics-as-usual.

The problem, rather, is that Mr. DeLay, who rode to power in 1994 on a wave of revulsion at the everyday ways of big government, has become the living exemplar of some of its worst habits. Mr. DeLay's ties to Mr. Abramoff might be innocent, in a strictly legal sense, but it strains credulity to believe that Mr. DeLay found nothing strange with being included in Mr. Abramoff's lavish junkets.

The WSJ's opinion reflects the view (as stated in the previous post) that there is no plausible way to believe that DeLay did not know what was going on.

Another complaint about DeLay is that he has been running some sort of influence-peddling racket. Some of his former staffers have been alleged to have been part of that racket, and the WSJ had something to say about that:

Nor does it seem very plausible that Mr. DeLay never considered the possibility that the mega-lucrative careers his former staffers Michael Scanlon and Mr. Buckham achieved after leaving his office had something to do with their perceived proximity to him. These people became rich as influence-peddlers in a government in which legislators like Mr. DeLay could make or break fortunes by tinkering with obscure rules and dispensing scads of money to this or that constituency. Rather than buck this system as he promised to do while in the minority, Mr. DeLay has become its undisputed and unapologetic master as Majority Leader.

And the editorial closed with this:

Whether Mr. DeLay violated the small print of House Ethics or campaign-finance rules is thus largely beside the point. His real fault lies in betraying the broader set of principles that brought him into office, and which, if he continues as before, sooner or later will sweep him out.

I am shocked. Shocked I say! Tom DeLay engaged in hypocritical conduct? And that comes from one of the most conservative, right wing, Republican papers in the country.

David Brooks

Brooks is a conservative columnist with the New York Times. Indeed, his conservative credentials are beyond question. He appears weekly on "The Newshour with Jim Lehrer" to present the right wing view in a panel discussion. Here is part of the exchange between Lehrer and Brooks on April 8, 2005:

JIM LEHRER: You have been staying in contact with Republicans on this, David. What are they telling you?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, first a number of them who normally say everything to me are saying even privately "I just don't want to talk about this," because they are running.

JIM LEHRER: They're just praying it's going to go away?

DAVID BROOKS: Right. And the ones who are talking very candidly to me off the record are saying there's been a deterioration, that there was a meeting where people rallied around DeLay and a number of people did speak up in his defense, there were about 20 people really clapping vociferously, a lot of people sitting on their hands and a lot more people who just didn't go to the meeting.

Brooks followed this up the next day in his column:

Then there is the Tom DeLay situation. Conversations with House Republicans in the past week leave me with one clear impression: If DeLay falls, it will not be because he took questionable trips or put family members on the payroll. It will be because he is anxiety-producing and may become a political liability.

Being conservative, the American people don't want leaders who perpetually play it close to the ethical edge. They don't want leaders who, under threat, lash out wildly at beloved institutions like the judiciary. They don't want leaders whose instinct is always to go out wildly on the attack. They don't want leaders so reckless that even when they know they are living under a microscope, they continue to act in ways that invite controversy.

How 'bout some Texas media?

The New York Times is one thing, but what are papers in Texas saying? Below are editorials from the two major papers in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

• The Fort Worth Star Telegram
  

Fort Worth, Texas, is strong Republican territory--maybe not as strong as Dallas (see below), but strong nonetheless. On April 3, 2005, the Fort Worth Star Telegram's (a/k/a the Startle-gram) ran an editorial, "Shame on Tom DeLay," which discussed The Bug Man's verbal attack on judges at the end of Terry Schiavo's life. Here are some highlights:

Some day, Tom DeLay will be called to account by the American people.

Sooner would be better than later for the sake of the Constitution.

It's bad enough that vitriolic leaders of activist groups have been railing against "judicial tyranny" as though judges involved in the legal maelstrom surrounding Terri Schiavo had acted without any authority whatsoever in order to pursue a wicked personal agenda.

But DeLay, the Republican House majority leader, instead of showing true leadership and shifting the debate to sobering, legitimate questions about the role of government in end-of-life decisions, has fueled the furor by resuming his judiciary-bashing.

*******

For DeLay -- censured three times by the House ethics committee and under grand jury investigation in Austin -- to challenge the propriety with which a succession of judges performed the largely thankless task of weighing last-minute appeals from Schiavo's parents could be laughable.

If it weren't so disturbing.

It wasn't supposed liberal activists turning down the petitions of Schiavo's parents to undo earlier rulings, but a mixture of Republican and Democrat appointees who correctly understood their duty not as pursuing a political outcome but as applying the law to the record and facts before them.

They followed an array of state court judges, Republicans and Democrats, appointed and elected, who had found that the law favored Schiavo's husband over her parents.

*******

DeLay has rattled his impeachment saber at federal judges before, singling out those whose rulings he disliked.

The tactic is neither new nor surprising for a political leader who acts as though separation of powers means that he gets all the power.

Still, it's an implied threat to judicial independence and orderly government that should be taken seriously and thwarted in no uncertain terms.

*******

Federal judges should be held accountable. But our constitutional scheme doesn't work unless they're also independent. Politicians who don't appreciate that ought to be considered hazardous to our national health.

(emphasis added).

• The Dallas Morning News
  

If there is a more Republican place on the planet than Dallas, Texas, I am unaware of it (I lived there for almost 20 years). The Dallas Morning News is the only daily paper in the city, and to say it is conservative and Republican is like saying it gets hot in the summer in Texas. Even so, the editorial board of the Morning News (a/k/a the Morning Snooze) went after DeLay in its April 2, 2005, editorial:

In pop parlance, a television program "jumps the shark" when it features a stunt or plot twist so ludicrous that the show has nowhere to go but down.

If House Majority Leader Tom DeLay fails to pull out of the downward ethics spiral he's caught in, history will note that the powerful Republican jumped the shark on the day in March he blamed a vast left-wing conspiracy for his woes.

What kind of mess is Mr. DeLay in? For starters, there's that ongoing money-laundering probe in Travis County, in connection with the DeLay-driven congressional redistricting effort.

Next, there's the ugly business with the House Ethics Committee, which after admonishing Mr. DeLay three times for ethics violations, had its Republican chairman sacked and replaced with a DeLay loyalist. The GOP majority also changed the rules to defang the committee.

And then there's the ongoing FBI investigation into two Washington lobbyists closely tied to the lawmaker, an investigation involving possible illegal use of contributions to pay for junkets and other goodies for members of Congress – including Mr. DeLay, who enjoyed a $70,000 golfing trip to Scotland five years ago with one of the lobbyists, Jack Abramoff.

Once upon a time, Tom DeLay helped lead an insurrection that toppled a Democratic House regime grown fat and happy with power. What a difference a decade in power makes. Somehow, we doubt the Democrats will miss the opportunity to remind voters come 2006.

Anticipating the threat to the GOP majority, The Wall Street Journal editorial page, which generally has been supportive of Mr. DeLay, warned last week: "Whether Mr. DeLay violated the small print of House Ethics or campaign-finance rules is thus largely beside the point. His real fault lies in betraying the broader set of principles that brought him into office, and which, if he continues as before, sooner or later will sweep him out."

House Republicans should be asking themselves whether they really want to stake their careers defending the folly of a politician who, despite all he has done for the Republican cause, has forgotten where he came from.

Let me tell ya, folks--if you are Republican, from Texas, a national leader, and one of Bush's boys, and the Dallas Morning News is bagging on you, you are in trouble. It is a sign that the big (and I mean big) money people are close to turning on you.

And, Bug Man, it also means that while the left wing might be out to get to you, they are not alone, for there are many on the right wing that think you need to go.