DANCING ON TOM DELAY'S GRAVE

The left wing is in celebration mode today. I'm tickled pink myself. If you had told me during the Clinton impeachment that this would be how DeLay's career will end, I would have laughed in your face. DeLay was, at that point, invincible, and totally reveling in his partisan and unconstitutional attempt to remove an elected and popular President from office. I remember, back then, my buddy Brad wishing death on DeLay, and my telling him that humiliation was a far better alternative. Sometimes wishes do come true.

Anyway, enough of my words. Check out these three essays from three left-wing sources about DeLay's demise.

Music for grave-dancing here.

From the Progressive:

DeLay Departs: Champagne All Around!

“I refuse to allow liberal Democrats an opportunity to steal this seat with a negative, personal campaign,” he said, adding a little bit later: “As difficult as this decision has been for me, it’s not going to be a great day for liberal Democrats, either.” Says who?

No matter who wins the seat in November, it is a great day not not only for liberal Democrats but for progressives in general and for anyone who wants to clean House.

For DeLay engaged in some of the most corrupt practices ever performed under that dome.

He used his enormous fundraising power, magnified by Jack Abramoff’s money machine, to extort political advantage.

“He was the most powerful leader in my time here,” Rep. Barney Frank told Lou Dubose in an article in the April issue of The Progressive entitled “DeLay’s Day of Reckoning?” Frank said DeLay had the “ability to influence local races because he was supported by Abramoff.” Anyone who strayed from DeLay’s line was threatened with a rightwing challenger funded to the gills by Abramoff, Frank said.

Click here for the rest.

From the Nation:

Hammered

But DeLay's crudest dismantling of democracy will be little mentioned today, just as it was barely noted at the time that he brought the hammer down.

On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving 2000, when the eyes of the nation were fixed on the Stephen P. Clark Government Center in downtown Miami, where a Dade County canvassing board was reviewing 10,750 uncounted ballots in Florida's disputed presidential contest between Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush, a riot orchestrated by DeLay's top aides and allies and carried out by Republican operatives flown in from Washington stopped the count. In so doing, DeLay's Izod-clad minions assured that the Bush campaign's Florida co-chair, Katherine Harris, would, in her capacity as secretary of state, be able to certify a 537-vote "win" for the Republican when the recount deadline arrived. It was that certification that allowed Florida Governor Jeb Bush to sign a Certificate of Ascertainment designating twenty-five Florida electors pledged to his brother. The paperwork was immediately transferred to the National Archives, where it would eventually be cited by the US Supreme Court in its decision to award the Florida electoral votes, and with them the presidency, to Bush.

DeLay's role in the recount, though little reported and even now little understood outside the inner circles of the Republican and Democratic parties, was definitional.

Click here for the rest.

From AlterNet:

The Cut and Run Republican

But the point here isn't simply that a man who consciously took it upon himself to undermine the American system of Democracy is facing charges for his strong-arming opponents and ethics breaches of breathtaking proportions. The point is that nearly every powerful player in the conservative movement and the Republican Party "fed from his trough."

Josh Marshall writes:

"It's DeLay's House. DeLay's Republican D.C. machine. They built and fortified it with the money he brought in. The great majority of them voted for the "DeLay Rule," custom-tailored for Majority Leader DeLay to avoid stepping down even after indictment. The current Republican membership of the House ethics committee was hand-picked to provide protection for DeLay, and the old membership was purged. He's their guy. Their rule rests on his machine. They can run, but they can't hide."

Click here for the rest.

In summary, DeLay's crimes are only superficially about money laundering and connections to criminal uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff--that's just the stuff for which the Lizard King currently stands to be convicted. Like Nixon, the crimes bringing down DeLay come only from scratching the surface. His true crime is, as observed by the writer of the Nation piece, an all out assault on democracy itself, subverting the true will of the electorate in favor of his much less popular conservative extremist views. Most of that won't make it into the corporate media, which actually likes him because he's done so much for corporate America--my bet is that they'll concentrate on the details and not the big picture. That's a shame because, outside of the media's microscope, the evil empire DeLay built will continue to drive America toward Talibanism and corporatocracy. So let's all enjoy this great news today. But just remember that the destruction of the Death Star in the first Star Wars film did not bring down the Empire. There was still much work to do after that in order to restore the Republic. Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine continue to terrorize the galaxy, and they may even have another Death Star up their sleeves. The battle's only just begun.

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