The Comedy Stylings of Robert Novak - Dissecting Tom Delay Edition

Now on exhibit is a piece by Robert Novak (aka the man who should also be walking the plank in the Valerie Plame identity exposure incident), courtesy of the Washington Post in which he describes Tom Delay's new book, "No Retreat, No Surrender: One American's Fight". The article explores some of Delay's problems with Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey and Preznit Flight Suit Fantasy hissownself. Excerpt:

DeLay is an angry man after being driven from the leadership, from Congress and, so far, from public life by "a concerted effort to destroy me legally, financially and personally" through a 2005 indictment in Texas. DeLay's response to Democratic District Attorney Ronnie Earle is familiar. What is unusual are his claims that "pre-existing tensions I had with Gingrich and Armey" partially explain their role in kicking DeLay out of the leadership.

DeLay admits that the Republican leaders empowered by the 1994 elections -- comprising himself as majority whip, Gingrich as speaker and Armey as majority leader -- "were not a cohesive team, and this hindered our ability to change the nation." He puts most blame "at Newt Gingrich's door."

In describing Gingrich as an "ineffective Speaker," DeLay writes: "He knew nothing about running meetings and nothing about driving an agenda." He adds: "Nearly every other day he had a new agenda, a new direction he wanted us to take. It was impossible to follow him."

DeLay also declares that "our leadership was in no moral shape to press" for the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. Writing well before Gingrich's admission for the first time last week, DeLay asserts: "It is now public knowledge that Newt Gingrich was having an affair with a staffer during the entire impeachment crisis. Clearly, men with such secrets are not likely to sound a high moral tone at a moment of national crisis."

Well, DeLay was right about the first sentence of that last paragraph. Too bad he and the other scumbags who rode the impeachment horse until it was foaming at the mouth, with blood streaming from its nostrils didn't realize that at the time they were playing God. DeLay, Gingrich, Livingston and the rest of those hypocrites should be ashamed of themselves for having subjected the nation to that travesty.

DeLay refers to Armey as "so blinded by ambition as to be useless to the cause" and a "poor leader" who had "few fresh ideas." He adds that Armey "resented anyone he thought might get in the way of his becoming speaker of the House. Beware the man drunk with ambition." He pleads innocence in his version of the failed 1997 coup attempt against Gingrich and accuses Armey, after realizing that he would not succeed Gingrich, of telling the speaker that DeLay was plotting against him: "He had lied to cover his ambitions, betraying both his movement and his fellow leaders."

Does the phrase "the pot calling the kettle black" have any meaning here? I guess not when DeLay is the one blinded by ambition...

DeLay, who was forced to step down as part of a politically motivated prosecution, is angry that Republicans, pressured by Democrats and the news media, retreated from a party rule that an indicted House Republican need not resign from the leadership. Gingrich and Armey (both out of Congress) opposed the rule. More significantly, to DeLay's dismay, so did Hastert, his former lieutenant.

The memoir ends DeLay's reticence in criticizing President Bush. Deriding Bush's self-identification as "a compassionate conservative," DeLay asserts that "he has expanded government to suit his purpose, especially in the area of education. He may be compassionate, but he is certainly no conservative in the classic sense." He also charges that Bush has failed to stress the role of U.S. troops fighting in Iraq, adding, "typically . . . no one at the White House was listening" to his advice.

Wah, wah, wah...I didn't fail conservativism, conservativism failed me... What a crock of excrement. And Tom, don't cry about the fact that Preznit FSF wasn't listening to you, he didn't listen to anyone once what passes for his mind was made up.

Anyway, here is some of Novak's summation:

Notwithstanding Flake's criticism, DeLay was the most conservative congressional leader I have witnessed in 50 years covering Capitol Hill. I rate him with Lyndon B. Johnson as a dominant legislator. But his revelation that GOP leaders did not constitute a band of brothers helps explain why 12 years of control produced much less than was anticipated.

There is no information about how many martinis Novak had imbibed when he typed this nonsense. I find it interesting that Novak, in his zeal to praise DeLay the legislator, compared DeLay to Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat. And Bob, the reason that "12 years of control produced much less than was anticipated" was because those in control were a gang of crooked bastards who wanted to run the country as if it was a feudal kingdom, with the citizenry as their serfs.

There's more, but it's turning my mind to Lime Jello. Read the whole article, and be thankful that Tom DeLay is, for the time being anyway, out of our lives. Too bad the same cannot be said for Robert Novak...