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Jewish World Review Oct. 3, 2005 / 29 Elul, 5765 Guilty or not, DeLay will walk By Joe Scarborough
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Let's start my memo on Tom DeLay by killing Hamlet in the first act.
The Majority Leader will walk.
Forget whether he is guilty or innocent. Ignore the political drama. Dismiss the screeching chatter from the political classes. Toss out the dire predictions from talking heads.
Dismiss it all because in the end, Tom DeLay will be found not guilty of the charges filed against him.
Why could DeLay survive a prosecution that would destroy most other politicians?
Because above all else, he is a political fighter.
That's necessary for DeLay's survival right now because Democrats have focused their efforts on destroying him since Newt Gingrich was run out of town in 1999. While Gingrich was going up in flames, DeLay had a front row seat for the Speaker's inglorious fall from power. Like the rest of us, he also saw just how meaningless Newt's efforts were to make peace with Democrats and media types.
The Washington establishment saw Gingrich as a crude, unpolished interloper who had to be destroyed. For a speaker who wanted to be recognized as a transformational figure in American life, that rejection was a bitter pill to swallow.
But from my years serving with Tom DeLay, I can assure you that he really couldn't care less what the New York Times or Washington Post editorial pages think of him.
The Hammer is a fighter. He revels in rejection when it comes from media elites and liberal Democrats. Let them strike him down, DeLay thinks. Because in the end, it will only make him stronger with his base.
Maybe that's why Tom DeLay is smiling.
He knows he is in for the fight of his life, but his enemies are the same ones he has beaten back hundreds of times before. And unlike Gingrich, DeLay will not try to be understood.
He will try to destroy all those who are trying to ruin his life.
That approach to political warfare is why Tom DeLay is so dangerous to Democrats.
It is also why I think he will win the fight of his life.
His nemesis, Ronnie Earle, is a partisan Democrat who has attended fundraisers supporting his party's efforts to take out the Majority Leader. That would be questionable conduct for any other Texas D.A. but unthinkable for the one who is trying to throw DeLay in jail.
Earle has probably overreached, and if political trials of the past are any indication, the D.A. will be the one falling on his face in the end.
Add Earle's missteps to DeLay's will to win (and his power grip on Washington and Texas politics) and you have a Lone Star State shootout that may be over before it even begins.
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Former Congressman Joe Scarborough (R-Fla.) hosts “Scarborough Country,” 10 p.m. ET, weeknights on MSNBC. He is the author of the recently published "Rome Wasn't Burnt in a Day : The Real Deal on How Politicians, Bureaucrats, and Other Washington Barbarians are Bankrupting America". (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.)Comment by clicking here. © 2005, MSNBC |
Mitch Albom | |||||||||||
