Vast Left Wing Conspiracy

In his battle to stay alive politically, embattled Congressman Tom Delay spoke at a breakfast for GOP Senators. The Associated Press reports

DeLay recommended that senators respond to questions by saying Democrats have no agenda other than partisanship, and are attacking him to prevent Republicans from accomplishing their legislative program.

Just to refresh the reader's memory, here are some of examples of Delay's corruption, er, Democratic partisanship:

(From Mike Hersh, in 2003)

• DeLay obstructed justice for low-paid sweatshop workers on the island of Saipan by taking large campaign contributions from Saipan's chief lobbyist and blocking any Congressional investigation of the appalling conditions there.
  
• DeLay obstructed justice by lying to the FBI when he charged that the reporter who broke the Henry Hyde adultery story in the 1990s had been working with the White House to expose Hyde.
  
• During a deposition for a lawsuit filed by a former business partner in the pest company in 1994, DeLay lied that he had not been an officer of the company for two or three years. On congressional financial disclosure forms filed in 1995, he listed himself as chairman of the company's board of directors.
  
• In 1997, DeLay actually shoved Rep. David Obey [D-Wisconsin] and called him a "chicken shit" on the House floor. That same year, DeLay tried to impeach federal judges he didn't like.
  
• In 1998, DeLay said that people with "foreign-sounding names" probably aren't Americans.
  

(More recently from the DNC)

• Tom DeLay claims that a 1997 trip to Moscow (where he met with the Russian Prime Minister) was arranged and paid for by a nonprofit public policy organization. But people who knew about the arrangements claim that the trip was actually arranged by lobbyists and funded by a mysterious company registered in the Bahamas that may have served as a front for Russian companies with ties to Russian security forces.
  
• Tom DeLay participated in a $70,000 expenses-paid trip to London and Scotland in 2000 that sources said was indirectly financed in part by an Indian tribe and gambling services company lobbying Congress.
  
• Since 2001, Tom DeLay's political action committees and campaigns have funneled more than $500,000 to his wife and daughter since 2001.
  
• In Texas, it's illegal for corporations to make donations to fund political campaigns. So Tom DeLay's Texans for a Republican Majority political action committee (TRMPAC) took $190,000 in corporate contributions and funneled them to the RNC, which then donated exactly $190,000 to TRMPAC-supported candidates. DeLay and TRMPAC are currently under investigation by a grand jury.
  
• An investigation by the Justice Department showed that Tom DeLay accepted a trip financed by the Korea-U.S. Exchange Council, breaking House rules that prohibit accepting travel expenses from "a registered lobbyist or agent of a foreign principal."
  
• Knowing that he faced investigation for a growing pile of scandals, Tom DeLay and the GOP House leadership purged the Ethics Committee of Republicans -- including Chairman Joel Hefley (R-CO) -- who weren't willing to overlook charges against DeLay, replacing them with members loyal to the leadership. They then changed the Committee rules to make it more difficult to begin investigations. Democrats on the Committee have refused to take any action in protest until the rules are restored.
  
• Tom DeLay has pushed lobbying firms to deny jobs to Democrats, and hire only Republicans, resulting in another Ethics Committee admonishment for inappropriately pushing a lobbying firm to hire a former GOP congressman. DeLay has pressured GOP lobbyists to make contributions to Republican candidates and the RNC.
  
• Tom DeLay and the Republican leadership kept open the vote for the Medicare bill for three hours -- long past the 15 minutes specified in House procedures -- in order to pressure Republicans to vote for the bill. Rep. Nick Smith (R-MI) said GOP leaders offered "bribes and special deals," leading to an investigation by the Ethics Committee, which admonished DeLay.
  
• When DeLay and his fellow Republicans were redrawing the Congressional districts in Texas to push Democrats out of the House, he used the Federal Aviation Administration to try and track a plane containing Democratic state legislators. The House Ethics Committee investigated DeLay's actions and once again admonished him.
  
• In 2002, executives at Kansas energy company Westar wrote a memo outlining how they could purchase a "seat at the table" with $56,500 in contributions to political committees associated with Tom DeLay and the GOP. DeLay was later admonished by the House Ethics Committee for creating the appearance of impropriety.
  

The House ethics committee, controlled by the GOP mind you, reprimanded Delay three times in 2004, which prompted the Republicans to change their own rules such that ethics violations would not disqualify someone from being Majority Leader, the so-called Delay rule.

Looking over the lengthy list of issues, we see grand jury investigations, Justice Department investigations, multiple ethics committee admonishments, and obstruction of justice allegations, not to mention several actions smacking of abuse of power. But the problem is that the Democrats don't have an agenda? Sure, there's a vast left wing conspiracy to smear Delay. Come on! (In all fairness, few if any of these have actually been proven at this point, and that must be kept in mind. But that isn't really the point. To have all this hanging over his head, there is obviously more at work here than a political smear campaign.)

Given all this sleaze, why are so many Republicans bending over backwards to support him? And not only to support him, but to make Delay out to be the heart and soul of American conservatism? Could it be because he donated over $2 million to other Republican congressional campaigns, primarily for House seats, in 2004? Maybe that's why Tony Perkins "said his mission is to remind people that DeLay is a large reason that Congress has a conservative majority."