Without DeLay

It’s hard not to chortle a bit over Tom DeLay’s “fall” and resignation from Congress. Here’s a man who both led and epitomized the hardball “We’re in charge, so back the hell away” GOP politics of the last five years. Here’s a man whose political epitaphs speak nothing of the good he did, but that he was “a hard fighter” and “effective” (the “effective” word keeps showing up over and over). Here’s a man who led Congress at a time of unparalleled (at least in recent years) spending, civil rights incursions, and entanglement of religion with law.

And now he’s, effectively, gone, brought down not just by corruption charges but by convictions on his staff and an electorate that seemed finally fed up with the whole thing.

DeLay will linger, like Newt Gingrich. He’ll write. He’ll serve on boards. He’ll be a fund raiser. He’ll attract attention (intentially and not). He certainly won’t go away. But his direct political power has been broken, fairly or not, either due to things he did or the sense of things he did. He’s done the best thing he could do “for the party” right now, falling on his sword and telling the public it’s because “liberal democrats” were using negative attacks and that he didn’t want the election to be “a campaign focused solely as a referendum on me” (why not?). It might — might — deflect some attention and let some voters forget about it all by November. But …

I’m glad to see him go. Hope he’s the first of many.