Oh, DeLay—You Scamp

Sometimes you just don’t know whether to laugh or put your fist through the wall.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, hoping to hold support among fellow Republicans, urged GOP senators Tuesday to blame Democrats if asked about his ethics controversy and accused the news media of twisting supportive comments so they sounded like criticism.

Officials said 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. One Republican said the Texan referred to a "mammoth operation" funded by Democratic supporters and designed to destroy him as a symbol of the Republican majority.

[…]

One senior Republican spoke sympathetically of DeLay after the closed-door meeting.

"I hope he survives, and I hope he will stay in there and do his job," said Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss.

"The power of prayer is the only thing that will sustain you" in the circumstance DeLay is in, Lott added, and he spoke disparagingly of any Republicans who fail to stand by the Texan.

It’s totally obscene that a man who was forced to step down for making hateful, racist remarks would be waxing rhapsodic about using the power of prayer in talking about a peer who is facing a similar fate for ethical violations. These two are really a matched set of nincompoops. Meanwhile, not to get too technical on you, Lottie, but prayer isn’t meant to be used to request deliverance through troubled waters into which one willingly dumped oneself. And something tells me that, since the game plan is to shift blame onto the Democrats, the prayers of which he speaks aren’t of the asking-for-forgiveness-to-find-redemption type. That would, of course, necessitate admitting wrongdoing, instead of disingenuously trying to project responsibility for your sins onto others.

DeLay has consistently denied any violation of either law or House rules.

His private remarks to Senate Republicans were in keeping with the response frequently offered on his behalf by House Republicans: Blame the Democrats and occasionally the news media for the scrutiny he faces. House Republicans intend to follow the script later in the week, hoping to showcase passage of bankruptcy legislation and estate tax repeal as a counterpoint to Democratic charges that they are merely power-hungry.

No, not merely power-hungry, of course not. The bankruptcy legislation and estate tax repeal clearly indicate that are greedy, money-hungry classists, too.