Here's hopin'!  If the current charges of money laundering don't get him, surely his Abramoff connection will.

With Tom DeLay in jail and Bush & Cheney lame ducks, I'd consider voting Republican again.


Today is Day 991 of the Iraq War. Just 9 more days until Day 1000.

Mr. Begala

Since you mentioned Ben Johnson, may I throw a quote from another movie of his your way as it does apply to Tom deLay:

"I've been around that trashy behavior all my life. I'm gettin' tired of puttin' up with it. And you can stay outta this poolhall, outta my cafe and my picture show too. I don't want no more of your business."

- Sam the Lion, The Last Picture Show.

I would like those 37% to take Sam the Lion's word into account and see how they feel about deLay then.

Nice writing...although I am inclined to like it as I am a Homer (Galveston) and in agreement with you. Lampson served the community well and enjoyed bipartisan support , back when that sort of thing was cool.

Thanks.

I've no doubt that they're overwhelmingly white, though not only Protestants (or men) vote anti-abortion or anti-gay. 

I also wouldn't undersell the appeal of his anti-tax, anti-regulation, anti-environmentalist rants.  These are my students we're talking about, so I, too, may know something.

Thank you for a well written piece which provides a wonderful context for the Sugarland express of Delay. 

 If my stepfather lived in Sugarland he would doubtless be a Delay supporter.  He is an odd man from my perspective.  Self made, he was the owner of a furniture store as a teenager and a millionaire from real estate.  He is a devoted follower of the WSJ editiorial page and Fox News, and is of the belief that all public employees are essentially welfare recipients (which includes me as a public university professor).  He is a social libertarian (believes in a woman's right to choose and assisted suicide for the terminally ill), but so strongly believes in deregulating business that the bugman would be his man.  He is antienvironment (there are plenty of salmon in Canada, you know, so we ought not to worry about dams along the Snake and Columbia....) and feels that wetlands protection and endangered species are merely there for government to oppress landowners like himself.  He is racist and will spout off stock myths about blacks and hispanics at the drop of a hat.   He once was upset when my African American sister in law  wore a Martin Luther King tee shirt to dinner (I was happy for her that there was at least another black face at the table!).  For some weird reason this was viewed as racist and offensive, despite the heroic status of Dr. King. 

I think this elderly white male, and the sons in law from his family and their sons would fit the bill for Delay men. And yes, they are basically among the 35% or so who are also still Bush men.  Rigid, doctrinaire, unquestioning, and more than willing to cast aside social libertarianism for the kind of business at any cost republicanism that Bush and Delay represent. 

For the life of me, I just can't figure out why you guys can't get any traction in the Red States, but I'll keep working on it and let you know if I come up with something.

In my day, friend, this kind of response was called "whistling in the dark."  In the elections of 2006, we will have more need of brakes than traction. 

Maybe even the remaining DeLay/Bush/Cheney supporters people aren't beyond help from a dose of The NewStandard - http://newstandardnews.net/.

Or google "K Street project" "hot tub Tom" "DeLay Hammer"  or "I am the government".

Tom is the most thuggish politician to come down the road in decades. He openly threatened lobbyists who had the temerity to hire Democrats. He has turned "pay to play" from something certain shady Congressmen on both sides played in the corners of the cloakrooms to something proudly played out on the floors of Congress. He routinely violates the rules of the house by keeping the vote open while openly and curruptly twisting arms until he gets a victory margin.

He is a crook. And a thoroughly mean person.

You send $190,000 of corporate money to Washington with explicit instructions of who to donate it to and in what amounts back in Texas when direct donations of that exact same amount to those same candidates would be illegal you raise some eyebrows. And whether they drink Chablis, lattes or Star Lager, the people of Sugarland are showing that they have lost their fear of Tom DeLay. The town bully has been put in his place and clearly people are breathing more freely.

Because you don't just drop 20 points overnight if people didn't have serious reservations to start with.

Great post, Mr. Begala. I love reading your posts here. Tom DeLay is a power whore, simple as that. The support he still enjoys has much more to do with the supporters than it does with DeLay. Now maybe that's true with any politician, but it's especially true in this case.

As a Senior at Dulles High School (go Vikings!) I volunteered with the DeLay Campaign (1984).  I have been trying to balance my Karma ever since.  Sugarland is dominarted by a lot of the original white flight suburbs and is heavily Republican.  I teach high school in the area and it is only lately that the local media has stopped its fawning coverage of DeLay. I think he could easily be challenged in a Republican primary (not that anyone would run against him) and with his new district, his bases is not as solid as it used to be. He is vulnerable.

I have often thought about this very point. What if the South won the war or Lincoln just let them go? Where would we be now?

It would have been a disaster for the South. They would have been stuck with a slavery that was economically dragging them down. The only way slavery could be made profitable was to keep exporting slaves into the west. Only that couldn't have continued since the Union would have controlled those states and Arizona, New Mexico, etc.  aren't exactly suitable for cotton or tobacco agriculture anyway.

Northern oil companies would have ended up controlling all the oil wells of Texas (just as really happened with Standard Oil).

The South would now be a 3rd world country similar to Mexico, and owned by foreign nationals from the north.

And the rest of the U.S. would be able to move forward without having to endless fight to drag the south along into the 21st (or even the 20th) centuries.   

But, there's no point giving way to my fantasies about handing Texas back to Mexico with an apology for stealing it in the first place.

The best thing we can do now is to try to revitalize the labor movement and join together with hispanics to transform the south into a halfway decent country. Because conservative evangelical southern whites have proven for generations that they are a lost cause. What can you say to someone who looks to the Book of Revelations as a guide to current events? That Jesus ISN'T coming soon and we'd better fix things here and now?

twtunes, you've now convinced me that it's time to move forward.  Pondering on "what might have been" regarding letting Texas go, letting the South secede.  It points out to me - that's purely academic speculation.  Doesn't much matter now to our lives.

The election of 2000 - doesn't much matter now does it?

How we got into Iraq.  The only reason that matters is for accountability.  Accountability matters.  But after those responsible are held to account, it's time to move on and rebuild.

I'll be waiting for next Summer, when Pelosi and Reid roll-out the Dem plan for the future.  But until then, it's limiting the damage the current regime can do.

After the election - with a Dem majority in one (or both) of the houses (America willing), we can start to repair this country and start the long journey forward.  That's what this country needs - to move forward.

Regards

My dog Alex 

  In the elections of 2006, we will have more need of brakes than traction. 

FROM YOUR POST TO GOD'S EARS!  (Let's not get too confident-  we're not looking too good in the polls either!)

As a Southern Liberal I'm fully aware of the faults of this region. However, before folks from other sections start casting stones maybe they ought to seriously contemplate the social and political drawbacks of their own region.

Racism and reactionary rightwing politics aren't exclusive to the South. For a recent reference, try reading Thomas Frank's "What's the Matter with Kansas." I note also that race riots seem to have happened in California, Michigan and non-southern states.

There's no way of knowing what would have happened if the Confederacy had been allowed to secede. A reasonable guess would be that the western states would have done the same, sooner or later.

 IOW, the union would have been destroyed, in effect, balkanized. The "grand experiment" in a democratic republic would have been certainly diminished, if not terminated. (I suspect that the New England/industrialized states would have evolved even more sharply into an oligarchy.)

Without a doubt, none of the regional enclaves would have had the impact on human history and development that the U.S. (replete with your "backward cousins" in Texas and the South) had.

For better or wose, we're stuck with each other so I think that we should work at understanding each other and trying to persuade a majority to get the country back on track to a liberal (in the traditional sense) democracy with human rights on the top of the agenda.

/sermon 

Texas was the only state to be asked to join the union, not "grabbed" from Mexico.  During this time, Texas was it's own country, Texans themselves liberated themselves from Mexico, that is also why Texas can, at any time, succeed from the US, it is part of the contract, along with still having our own secret service (Texas Rangers) and Military.
For the record, I hate Delay and the crap he pulls and I am from Texas, Austin luckily!

Cheers

Jessifu 

Per the comments about Texas being invited to join the Union, secession by Texas sounds like an excellent idea for all involved and I would support their choice to do so.  As one of the hated Northeastern Liberal Trial Attorneys, I would happily donate my hard-earned monety to any force that would rid eliminate this theocratic, death-penalty obsessed, violence-obsessed, right-wing, racist and corrupt boil upon the rear end of our republic.  They are not my people and I feel no shame whatsoever as an American in saying so.

Let the next civil war be the one to evict the theocratic South out, not keep them in. If at first you don't secede, try, try again.

Paul, you know how to tell a story, that's for sure.

My guess is folks are looking for a conservative, not a crook.

That's likely true, but we're left with the nagging question of who are the 37%?  I would think that today that figure does include some fundamentalists.

When Ann Richards lost to W in '94, my Texan friend called me in disgust. I asked him why he thought she lost. He thought about it and said, "She lost because she had an agenda. Most people down here just wanna be Texas."  I didn't understand what he meant at the time, but now, after spending a lot of time in Texas, I think I get it.

Simply put, most Texans do not like change, especially Texan men. The men love huntin', fishin' and drinkin', not necessarily in that order. Remember that up until the early 1990's, you could drive with a beer in your hand and your passengers could drink the hard stuff. When that law changed, many Texan men looked at it as just another example of the government messin' with Texas.

In the last fifty years, Texans (especially the men) feel they have endured thousands of similar injustices, some small, some large. Small: Being forced to wear a seatbelt while driving. Big: Being forced to send your kids to school with non-white children.

Don't get me wrong. Not all Texans are racist. But a lot are. Go to a barber shop in California or New York and you will probably not hear the N-word. Go to one in Texas and I can just about guaranty you'll hear it.

So why do Texans tend to vote Republican? Howard Dean summed it up nicely: God, guns, and gays. The GOP has done an excellent job of playing to Texans' worst fears that a secret cabal of liberals will come in the night and take away their guns, blow up their churches, and turn them gay.

Hannity, Fox and Rush feed them this crap every day and they lap it up with a spoon. Scapegoating is the cheapest and easiest form of politics. Simply put, it works. It brings votes and ratings. as long as someone is telling these folks that someone else is to blame for their problems, nothing will ever change in Texas.