Well, it’s official: Tom “The Hammer” DeLay has finally fallen.
After resigning his seat in the House of Representatives in response to money laundering indictments and the guilty pleas of his senior aides to corruption and conspiracy charges, DeLay decided to bow out Nixon-style before images of a Republican party leader stepping out of an armored van in shackles irreversibly crippled the GOP’s electoral outlook in ‘06 or ‘08.
It’s still unclear where DeLay will find a place to hang his hairdo, but things usually have a way of working themselves out for white millionaires with close ties to the Christian Coalition.
When the Hammer Didn’t Hurt ‘Em Legal Defense Fund kicks into gear there’ll be fat, sweaty well-wishers in “Jesus is My Co-Pilot” T-shirts lined up from Lubbock to Houston just aching for a chance to dump what’s left of the family savings over to the man who helped cut Junior’s veterans benefits after sending him to war.
Indeed, Tom DeLay is the American Dream incarnate. He started out running his own pest control business in Houston, only to run it into the ground after being sued by the IRS three times for failure to pay taxes. The Hammer saw himself as the strangled victim of an over-reaching government and decided to get into politics.
As a state legislator in Texas, DeLay was known mostly for his intense partying schedule, earning him the nickname “Hot Tub Tom.” Then one night, like George W. Bush, he found Jesus somewhere in a bottle of Scotch. He turned his life around, joined the Reagan Revolution, and helped engineer the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress, eventually working his way up to the House majority leader seat.
Once there, he played Congress like a schoolyard bully plays kickball. Don’t like the rules? Ignore them. The Ethics committee’s bringing too many complaints against you? Remove its power. Campaign finance laws got you down? Create fake charities to launder any illegal corporate donations. It’s good to be the King. Hell, he even had the balls to dispatch Homeland Security officials to spy on state legislators who disagreed with him.
The Hammer was in a class all his own, a proto-fascist tyrant with an egomaniacal streak unmatched in American politics. It was only after he got unimaginably lazy and greedy, trading favorable votes for bar tabs and greens fees at Scottish golf courses, that people began to take notice. And how did he respond? By falling back on the support of the Christian Right, by accusing prosecutors of political bias, by comparing his plight to that of Terry Schiavo and Jesus Christ.
I don’t feel bad for DeLay or the legion of low-rent slimeballs that will be sucked into the insatiable vortex of the scandal surrounding him. These are people who simply changed or ignored the rules of American governance when they didn’t suit the cheapest of their immediate needs. They’ve had five years in the sun, exchanging everything from airfare to golfing trips to bar tabs for the full support of one of the most powerful legislative majorities in American history. And they commit the only unpardonable sin in Washington: getting caught.
I’m also not about to join the swaggering and smug pats on the back among the Hilary Clintons and Arianna Huffingtons of the world. The only reason The Hammer went down is because a few concerned citizens in Texas and Democrats like Rep. Louise Slaughter from the “unelectable liberal fringe” decided to do something about it.
But maybe this is it. Maybe this is the turn of the tide we’ve all been waiting for, since that teary, beer-soaked night in November 2004 when the nation turned the tap on the formaldehyde drip and we began this colossal bummer known as Dubya v2.0. Maybe we’ll finally start to listen to the voices of change that have been relegated to the sidelines of American political discourse for the past five, ten, God knows how many years. Maybe it’s time for a new revolution like the one our parents fought for, lost, forgot, and abandoned.
I, for one, hope not. I’d be out of a job.
